Lolo Fakaosilea (born 10 June 1995) is an Australian

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In it ...

player. He currently plays as a flanker for

Kintetsu Liners Hanazono Kintetsu Liners rugby team are a Japanese rugby union team owned by Kintetsu Corporation which was founded in 1929. They have won the All-Japan Championship three times as an amateur team. Their home is at Hanazono Rugby Stadium in Hig ...

in the

Top Challenge League The Top Challenge League was a professional rugby union competition in Japan. It was the second-highest level of rugby competition in the country and is a companies league; all the teams are owned by major companies and the players are generally ...

in Japan.

Family and early life

Lolo Fakaosilea was born in

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

but moved to

Brisbane, Queensland Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...

with his family as a young boy. His father Seiana Fakaosilea had played for the Auckland Blues and also represented the inaugural New Zealand Tongan first XV that played trial matches against the

Pacific Islanders Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/ racial term, it is used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants and diasporas—of any of the three major subregions of Oce ...

. Fakaosilea started his rugby at the age of five, playing for the Sunnybank Rugby junior club until he was twelve. He then moved to Emerald where he attended Marist College from 2009 to 2011. While playing rugby for Marist College he was selected in the Central Queensland Bushrangers team to play in the Queensland Junior State Championships. He returned to Brisbane for his senior high school years at

Brisbane Boys College (Let Honour Stainless Be) , established = 1902 , type = Independent, single-sex, day and boarding , denomination = Presbyterian and Uniting Church , slogan = , headmaster = André Casson , city = Toowong , state = Queensland , country ...

and St Patrick's College, Shorncliffe. Fakaosilea was selected for the

Australian Schoolboys The Australian Schoolboys refer to junior teams that represent Australia in various sports. The name is mainly used in rugby league, rugby union and baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players ...

rugby team in 2012 and 2013. Fakaosilea is also a nephew of the former All Black rugby star

Jonah Lomu Jonah Tali Lomu (12 May 1975 – 18 November 2015) was a New Zealand professional rugby union player. Lomu is considered to have been the first true global superstar of rugby, and consequently had a huge impact on the game. He is widely regarde ...

, and he is briefly mentioned in Lomu's autobiography.

Career

Fakaosilea played premier grade rugby for the Sunnybank club. He was selected for the Australian Men's Youth Sevens team to play at the Youth Olympic Festival held at Sydney in 2013, before signing a one-year contract for the 2014 season, and then later on signing a further two-year contract with the

Queensland Reds The Queensland Reds is the rugby union team for the Australian state of Queensland that competes in the Southern Hemisphere's Super Rugby competition. Prior to 1996, they were a representative team selected from the rugby union club competitions ...

for the 2015 and 2016 seasons. In 2014, he played for the Reds A team in the

Pacific Rugby Cup The World Rugby Pacific Challenge, formerly the IRB Pacific Rugby Cup, is an annual rugby union football tournament held in Oceania since 2006. It is contested by national 'A' teams (formed from the best locally based players, with most not alr ...

, and was selected for the Australia U20 team to play at the

2014 IRB Junior World Championship The 2014 IRB Junior World Championship was the seventh annual international rugby union competition for Under 20 national teams. The event was organised in Auckland, New Zealand by rugby's governing body, World Rugby, then known as the Internation ...

held in New Zealand. Later that year Fakaosilea was named in the Queensland Country squad for the

National Rugby Championship The National Rugby Championship, known as NRC, was an Australian rugby union competition. It was contested by eight teams, seven from Australia and one from Fiji. The tournament ran from 2014 until 2019 before being disbanded in 2020 following t ...

, but was sadly side lined, after sustaining a torn meniscus which resulted in needing surgery. Fakaosilea made his Super Rugby debut for the Reds during the

2015 Super Rugby season The 2015 Super Rugby season was the 20th season of Super Rugby and the fifth season featuring an expanded 15-team format. For sponsorship reasons, this competition was known as Asteron Life Super Rugby in Australia, Investec Super Rugby in New ...

, coming off the bench against the

Hurricanes A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depend ...

at Lang Park. He was selected again for the Australian Under 20 team in 2015.

References

External links

Queensland Reds profile

stats {{DEFAULTSORT:Fakaosilea, Lolo 1995 births Australian rugby union players Australian sportspeople of Tongan descent Queensland Reds players Queensland Country (NRC team) players Rugby union flankers Living people Rugby union players from Auckland