"Food bills were pretty hefty" - 5 heaviest ever international rugby players

Fly-halves, look away now. At 6ft 4in and 21st 12lb 7oz, Fonua is a buccaneering nightmare with and without the ball.

As one of only a few rugby players weighing in at over 300 pounds on this list, James Johnston is a Samoan player with great talent. The big man also has a great sense of humor to go along with his big smile stating in a recent interview, “I guess you could say the food bills were pretty hefty in our household when I was growing up.”

Who needs French flair when you have beasts like this at the breakdown and set piece? Atonio was born in New Zealand to Samoan parents but in 2011 he joined La Rochelle - where he has made nearly 200 appearances and qualified for the national team. 

The weight of this behemoth rugger has always been widely discussed. Tameifuna was recently ordered to lose 20 kilograms of weight after he showed up to the Rugby World Cup practices at one of the heaviest weights of his career.

Currently, “Big Ben” plays in France at 352 pounds and has declared, “I pretty much promised myself on that day, ‘I’m never gonna get back to that 160kg bracket ever again.'”

At his peak his weighed more than double England fly-half Marcus Smith.

Even though he didn’t stay at this massive weight for all of his careers, he was and still is one of the largest men ever to play the game of rugby on the International stage. He was also fairly successful in his tenure.

He was an enormous man, with strength that sometimes got him into trouble. In 1999, he was supposedly charged and convicted of assault. However, the sentence was dismissed so that he could play in a World Cup qualifier against Tonga. It just goes to show you that weight can actually help you get out of trouble if you know how to use it.