Luke Whitelock

Luke Whitelock won six National Provincial Championships with Canterbury and captained the side for three of them. He played there alongside his three brothers, George, Adam and Sam, and at the Crusaders as well. Their maternal grandfather Nelson Dalzell was an All Black in the 1950s, and two great-uncles played for New Zealand too.

He plays at the base of the Pau scrum, stands 1.93m, weighs 112kg and is 35.

He grew up on a dairy farm at Linton, outside Palmerston North, and started at the same club as his brothers. New Zealand used him at under-20 level in 2010 and 2011, and Canterbury made him a professional at twenty, in a season they won.

Steve Hansen capped him in Tokyo against Japan in November 2013. What followed was four years without a call, then a return on the 2017 European tour, in which he captained the midweek side against France, and a Rugby Championship title in 2018. Seven caps in all.

He left the family club for the Highlanders in 2016 to help them defend a Super Rugby title, and they went out in the semi-finals.

France came in 2019, on an initial three years. A hundred matches for the club have followed, along with the captaincy and a standing as one of the players most identified with it through the 2020s.

A durable, organising back-rower in his eighth season in the Top 14, and the least famous of four brothers who all made a professional career out of the same farm.