#2. Ma’a Nonu (New Zealand)
Current club: San Diego Legion
San Diego Legion re-signed former New Zealand All Blacks Ma’a Nonu for the 2023 Major League Rugby season. The 40-year-old center (41 in May) is 6’0″ and 240 lbs.
Ma’a played 872 minutes in 13 matches, starting 12, and scored one try in 2022. For Ma’a, 2022 was is his second stint with the Legion. During the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, he played 289 minutes in 4 starts and scored 3 tries. He then signed with Toulon as a medical joker and spent 2020 and 2021 with the team.
Ma’a is from Wellington, New Zealand, and attended First Strathmore Park Primary School and then Rongotai College.
He played his amateur rugby for Oriental Rongotai, the Wellington Secondary Schools from 1999-2000, and Wellington U19s in 2001. He also played rugby league as a youth.
He played for Wellington from 2002-2015, Super Rugby for the Hurricanes from 2003-2015, the Ricoh Black Rams in 2011-12 in Japan, the Blues in 2012, Highlanders in 2013, Toulon in the Top 14 from 2015-2018, and the Blues in 2019.
Embed from Getty ImagesNew Zealand National Team
Ma’a represented the New Zealand Sevens team in two competitions from 2002-2004.
He played for the New Zealand All Blacks (#1031) making his debut against England on June 14, 2003, and playing through 2015. He was selected to the 2003 Rugby World Cup squad and played in Pool matches against Canada, Italy, and Tonga. He also won two Rugby World Cups in 2011 and 2015.
While with the team, he won five Tri-Nations/Rugby Championships, and eight Bledisloe Cups, and was capped 103 times. In 2005 he played against the British & Irish Lions.
After considering a code switch in December 2006 to the National Rugby League following the 2007 Rugby World Cup, he was dropped to the Junior All Blacks and not selected for the RWC squad, but returned to the All Blacks squad in 2008.
Ma’a also played for the Barbarians from 2007-2010.