Seilala Lam

Seilala Lam was an openside flanker until Michael Cheika, then coaching the Waratahs, told him he would get further as a hooker because Australia had fewer of them. He was in his mid-twenties. He switched, and went on to play two World Cups.

Note on his current club: Lam is still listed in Clermont‘s squad data. He signed there in November 2025 to cover Folau Fainga’a’s departure, on a deal that ran to the end of 2025-26, and left when it expired in June 2026.

He was born in Hamilton, New Zealand, moved to Australia at eleven, and comes from a large rugby family: his older brother Jack is a Samoa flanker, Pat Lam is a cousin, and Seilala Mapusua, the Samoa centre he is named after, is his uncle.

He learnt the game in the back row at St Edmund’s College in Canberra and the Queanbeyan Whites. Randwick in 2013, Eastern Suburbs in 2014, training with the Waratahs squad, then the Canberra Vikings for the first National Rugby Championship season.

France was supposed to be a detour. He was heading to Auckland for the ITM Cup in October 2015 and went to Nevers in Fédérale 1 instead, covering Rémi Stolz’s injury. Twenty-three games, promotion to Pro D2, and then not retained.

Perpignan picked him up in August 2017 on a one-year deal, again as injury cover. He stayed eight years. He won the Pro D2 title with them in 2018 and 2021, went up and down with the club, and kept extending — 2020, 2022, December 2023, and again in March 2025 at 36. In November 2025, after two substitute appearances, Perpignan released him with immediate effect. Clermont signed him days later.

Samoa capped him against Georgia in Apia in June 2016. He has 30 caps and four tries, played four matches at the 2019 World Cup and four more in France in 2023, and won the Pacific Nations Cup in 2022.

A durable, low, scrummaging hooker who has spent a decade being the answer when a club loses one.