Reece Hewat

Reece Hewat was injured playing for Australian Schools in 2015 and did not play again until March 2017. Two shoulder operations and then a ruptured cruciate ligament accounted for eighteen months. The Queensland Reds gave him a professional contract anyway.

He plays in the back row for Pau, is 1.91m and 108kg, and is 28.

Johannesburg is where he was born, to a South African father and an Australian mother, and the family dairy farm in the Free State is where he grew up. Financial trouble moved them on when he was seven, first to New Zealand and then to Wollongong, where he played both codes before choosing union and boarding at Nudgee College in Brisbane. The school made him captain, and so did the national schools side.

The comeback year went well: a junior Super Rugby title with a try in the final, the captaincy of Australia under-20s at the Oceania championship, and the captaincy of the Junior Wallabies at the 2017 world championship, where he played five matches and scored.

Senior rugby did not follow. One appearance for the Reds, in July 2017, off the bench for Caleb Timu, and then a year in which he played no professional rugby at all and turned out for a Brisbane club side.

He left for France in December 2018 on his agent’s advice, having considered England, and started in the second division with Aurillac. Pau brought him into the Top 14 in 2021.

A hard, high-workrate flanker who captained every side he played for as a junior and has spent his senior career several rungs below where that suggested he would end up.