The All Blacks are ushering in a new generation of loose forwards, and surrounding their latest Test centurion, Ardie Savea, with youthful exuberance is yielding some promising results.

The latest addition to the matchday squad, Peter Lakai, earned his first start of his young All Blacks career in Perth over the weekend after a powerful showing off the bench in Auckland the week prior.

The 22-year-old’s promotion saw 23-year-old Wallace Sititi, the 2024 Breakthrough Player of the Year, move to the bench. Savea and Test rookie, 25-year-old Simon Parker, continued their respective roles on the flanks as they had throughout the opening four rounds of The Rugby Championship.

2025 has seen familiar faces like Dalton Papali’i and Ethan Blackadder fall out of the selection picture due to the impressive form of the newcomers, and their continued emergence in the international arena means that selection for the All Blacks XV squad, let alone the All Blacks, looks increasingly competitive.

Former All Blacks playmaker Stephen Donald says the likes of Parker, Lakai, and Sititi have all staked their claim in the matchday squad, and would have done so earlier were it not for injuries ruling each of them out of the July Series.

“When you think about Lakai, Parker, that clearly was the thought process all along,” Donald said on The Aftermatch with Kirst & Beav. “What else are you going off, if it wasn’t during Super Rugby that you said ‘right, that’s our loose forward mix’?

“It’s certainly got interesting all of a sudden. Obviously, Wallace was incredible last year. Peter Lakai has now been given the chance, and he went well in the wet.

“He did what Peter Lakai does, he carried hard, with his footwork. He offers another real threat at the breakdown, defensively, too.

“I literally have said this a million times, but he’s Ardie. He’s a young Ardie. He will look bigger in 10 years’ time; he’ll look like Ardie does now, physically.

“But, when you’ve got Parker, who’s this big No.6, another Ardie-style footballer, who is hard at the breakdown as well as being this carrying loose forward, you sort of need it. And I just think that maybe that is part of the selectors’ thinking, that we’ve literally got a couple of Ardies there now, and having a big Simon Parker there to be a lineout option, to be a physical presence defensively. Sheer body size is going to help.”

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While Tupou Vaa’i, Samipeni Finau, Du’Plessis Kirifi, Christian Lio-Willie, and Dalton Papali’i have each had a shot in New Zealand’s back row in 2025, Donald says the current crop are the ones who should get the nod when the Northern Tour kicks off in Chicago against Ireland.

“Because of the conditions in Perth, and the manner in which they won, I don’t think you can go away from it,” he said.

“That stopped a lot of the razzle-dazzle that you’d expect from a few of those boys that were picked, but they all did their job in teaming rain. So you could say no one was a failure in that.”