Folau Fainga’a

Hookers do not score twelve tries in seventeen matches. Folau Fainga’a did it in the 2019 Super Rugby season for the Brumbies, off the back of a maul that was built specifically to give him the ball a metre out.

Note on his current club: Fainga’a is still listed in Clermont‘s squad data, but he left in November 2025 and signed a three-year deal with the NSW Waratahs from the 2026 Super Rugby season. He went home to prepare for a World Cup on Australian soil in 2027.

He is 1.78m and 106kg, born in Sydney, and no relation to the Wallabies twins Anthony and Saia Fainga’a. His cousin Chris Siale played sevens for Australia and spent seven years at Tarbes.

The climb was slow. Sydney University in the Shute Shield, named in Sydney Stars squads in 2014 and 2015 without playing, called into a Waratahs side short of hookers in 2016 and again not used. NSW Country Eagles for five games, then the Canberra Vikings.

The Brumbies gave him a one-year deal for 2018. He debuted against the Melbourne Rebels on 9 March, Josh Mann-Rea got injured, and he took the shirt and never gave it back. Two more years were added in April. Then the 2019 try haul, and a Super Rugby AU title in 2020 with five tries in eight games, including one in the final against the Reds.

Michael Cheika had already brought him into the Wallabies squad as an apprentice in October 2017, before he had played a single Super Rugby match, to learn behind Stephen Moore. The first cap came on 25 August 2018 against New Zealand in Auckland. He went to the 2019 World Cup, and has 38 caps and seven tries.

He moved to the Western Force for 2023, then to Clermont from 2023-24 in the Top 14.

He throws well enough and carries better than most in the position. What he is really for is the five-metre lineout. Give him a maul and a metre and he scores.