Langi Gleeson

Langi Gleeson finished school and left rugby union for the South Sydney Rabbitohs academy. Covid cut that short, he went back to Manly in 2021, and Australia capped him in October 2022. Very few careers change direction twice inside three years and end up ahead.

No 8 at Montpellier, 1.88m and 110kg, and 25 years old.

Born in Sydney to an Australian father and a Fijian mother, he spent about ten years of his childhood in Fiji and went to primary school at Dilkusha in Nausori. Back in Sydney he played both codes at St Augustine’s College in Brookvale and club rugby for the Harbord Harlequins and then Manly.

The Waratahs picked him up quickly once he returned. A knee injury cost him the 2021 season, but not the contract. He debuted in Super Rugby in February 2022, got his first start on the flank at the Highlanders in May, and recorded the quickest 40 metres in the entire Waratahs squad, at 110kg.

Australia A followed that winter, where his coach Jason Gilmore called him the find of the Pacific Nations Cup. Dave Rennie capped him against Scotland that October and started him against Wales a month later. Seventeen caps have followed, and appearances at the 2023 World Cup and against the British and Irish Lions in 2025.

Announcing his move to France in early 2025 got him dropped from a Wallabies training camp, and he was picked for the Lions series anyway, which says something about how hard he is to leave out.

An athlete first: fast, heavy, and a problem for any defence trying to hold him at the gainline.