Asafo Aumua did not play a single Test in 2025. Israel Dagg thinks he is the man who will decide the 2026 series against the Springboks.
Asked on the Kick Offs & Kick Ons podcast to name the All Blacks forward who most needs to fire across the four Tests, Dagg reached for the obvious answer and then talked himself out of it. It was “hard to go past” Ardie Savea, he said, but everyone would name Savea. So he went elsewhere: to a 29-year-old hooker who spent last season outside the Test squad and shut his year down early with concussion symptoms.
What Israel Dagg said about Asafo Aumua
Dagg framed it as a player he has watched change over the past four or five months, someone he now believes can “light this world on fire” in South Africa. “He’s a beast,” Dagg said.
Play South Africa, Dagg said, and “they try and bully you”, they get under your skin, they intimidate you. Then came his counter, put as a question: “How intimidating is a guy that’s… deadlifting and doing a shrug with 350 kilos” — in track shoes. The point was never the lift itself. It was what a pack thinks when it reads that name on the teamsheet.
The Stormers match sharpened it. “He comes on and he impacts the game,” Dagg said, describing a hooker standing over opponents and “bringing that edge and a bit of dog” — the way Dane Coles once did for the All Blacks, “but in a different way”. That comparison carries weight in Wellington. Coles and Aumua are both Hurricanes hookers, and Aumua inherited the position when Coles retired from Super Rugby.
The 350kg lift, and the number that is on the record
Dagg’s figure came out conversationally, mid-interview, and WeTalkRugby has not independently verified it.
What is documented is nearly as striking. The Hurricanes have listed Aumua bench-pressing 195kg in pre-season, a club record. He stands 177cm and carries around 110kg, which is loose-forward bulk on a hooker’s frame, and he has been quick since he was a teenager. He was the Wellington Lions’ leading try-scorer at 19.
Whether the figure is exact matters less than what it is describing.
Asafo Aumua’s road back from a lost season
The reason this pick has any edge to it is that Aumua was nowhere twelve months ago.
It is a strange place for him to have ended up. Aumua arrived with more noise than almost any forward of his generation. He was leading try-scorer for the Wellington Lions at 19. He scored a hat-trick from hooker in the 2017 World Rugby U20 Championship final, as New Zealand beat England 64–17. The All Blacks called him up that November, aged 20, before he had played a single game of Super Rugby. His Hurricanes debut came the year after that.
He did not wear the black jersey once in 2025. Brodie McAlister and George Bell moved ahead of him. For the Hurricanes, where he was one of four co-captains, he managed seven Super Rugby starts, 422 minutes and a single try. By the time the NPC came round he ended his season early, dealing with a run of injuries and concussion symptoms including headaches.
Speaking to The Post in January, he described tough times and forcing a smile through them, and said he was mostly proud of getting through it. He has since signed with the Hurricanes and New Zealand Rugby through to the end of 2027.
None of that is the usual profile of a man tipped to swing a series against the world champions. It is what makes the call worth arguing with.
Where Asafo Aumua fits in the All Blacks hooker pecking order
Aumua went into this tour with 22 Tests to his name. That is the smallest number in a crowded room.
Codie Taylor has 109 caps and captained the side for the first time against the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday, at 35. Samisoni Taukei’aho has 44. George Bell, at 24, has four and is the coming man. Dave Rennie carried all four in his 44-man touring squad.
Realistically, then, Dagg is not predicting Aumua starts at Ellis Park. He is predicting the bench changes the game — which, in a four-Test series played inside three weeks, is a bigger job than it sounds.
Why Asafo Aumua matters against the Springboks
There is a complication, and it is the same one Dagg raised about the whole tour.
New Zealand have finished on the wrong side of the penalty count in four consecutive matches. Dagg called the Stormers game “a pretty tough watch”, said it had “more penalties than any other game” he could remember watching, and warned the stop-start TMO interventions “ruined the rhythm” before the All Blacks fought clear. His worry for the series was blunt: “Have we got a plan B?” A bench forward whose value is confrontation is a double-edged selection in that environment. The line between edge and eight minutes in the bin is thin, and it has not been falling New Zealand’s way.
Across the field, the Springbok pack remains the benchmark. Rassie Erasmus made 13 changes for the recent win over Argentina, South Africa’s twelfth in a row, and that depth means fresh heavy bodies in every one of the four Tests. New Zealand’s set-piece decline was one of the defining problems of their 2025 season.
Dagg’s back-line pick was Damian McKenzie at fullback. His series prediction was 3–1 to the All Blacks.
The first Test of Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry is at Ellis Park on 22 August. Rennie names his side next week, and we will find out quickly whether Dagg has seen something the selectors have.
Quick answers
Who is Asafo Aumua?
A 29-year-old All Blacks and Hurricanes hooker from Lower Hutt, of Samoan descent. He scored a hat-trick in the 2017 World Rugby U20 Championship final against England and first appeared for the All Blacks that November, aged 20.
How many Tests has Asafo Aumua played?
Twenty-two at the naming of the 2026 touring squad. He played no Tests during 2025.
Why did Israel Dagg pick Asafo Aumua over Ardie Savea?
Dagg said Savea was the answer everyone would give, and chose instead the player he believes brings the physical edge needed against the Springboks.
When do the All Blacks play the Springboks?
Ellis Park on 22 August, Cape Town on 29 August, FNB Stadium on 5 September and Baltimore on 12 September.
