{"id":518244,"date":"2025-10-22T00:00:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T00:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/518244\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T00:00:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T00:00:12","slug":"louis-rees-zammit-recalled-to-wales-squad-after-nfl-experiment-wales-rugby-union-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/518244\/","title":{"rendered":"Louis Rees-Zammit recalled to Wales squad after NFL experiment | Wales rugby union team"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Louis Rees-Zammit is in line for an international comeback for Wales next month, 21 months after \u00adabandoning the sport to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2024\/jan\/16\/louis-rees-zammit-quits-rugby-in-shock-move-to-pursue-dream-of-nfl-career-gloucester-wales\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">try his luck in American football<\/a>. Rees-Zammit, now 24, is among 39 players named in the first squad to be picked by the new national head coach, Steve Tandy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The British &amp; Irish Lions wing, who won the most recent of his 32 caps at the 2023 World Cup, made the switch to American football in January 2024 but ended up not featuring in a \u00adcompetitive NFL game. He <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2025\/aug\/09\/an-american-dream-dashed-why-louis-rees-zammit-called-time-on-nfl-adventure\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">returned to union in August<\/a> when he joined the English Prem side Bristol.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Rees-Zammit has missed his club\u2019s past two games with a foot injury but he is not expected to be a long\u2011term absentee. Wales are due to kick off their autumn Test campaign against Argentina on 9\u00a0November before \u00adfacing Japan, New\u00a0Zealand and South Africa.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Tandy, formerly the Scotland defence coach, has also selected \u00adSaracens\u2019 Rhys Carr\u00e9, who was pre\u00adviously barred from representing Wales under the rule that demands that players based outside the \u00adcountry require at least 25 caps to be eligible. Carr\u00e9 has made 20 \u00adappearances but now requalifies on the basis he was not offered a decent deal to stay in Wales when he moved back to north\u00a0London in 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">There are five uncapped players, with the Dragons hooker Brodie Coghlan, the Ospreys lock James Fender and back-row Morgan Morse, the Cardiff prop Danny \u00adSouthworth and the Bath centre Louie Hennessey all making a squad led by the flanker Jac Morgan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cIt\u2019s been really exciting going through the whole process and \u00adrealising how many good players we\u2019ve got,\u201d Tandy said. \u201cThere\u2019s a really good mix of some young guys coming in, mixed with some \u00adexperience as well. But the \u00adoverall feeling is really exciting and I can\u2019t wait to get the boys into camp on Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The long-serving Racing 92 lock Will Rowlands, capped 41 times by his country, will not be involved and has announced his retirement from international rugby. Cameron \u00adWinnett and Keelan Giles were \u00adunavailable for selection because of injury.<\/p>\n<p><a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"#EmailSignup-skip-link-8\" class=\"dcr-jzxpee\">skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1xjndtj\">The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week&#8217;s action reviewed<\/p>\n<p><strong>Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/help\/privacy-policy\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/policies.google.com\/privacy\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">Privacy Policy<\/a> and <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/policies.google.com\/terms\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n<p id=\"EmailSignup-skip-link-8\" tabindex=\"0\" aria-label=\"after newsletter promotion\" role=\"note\" class=\"dcr-jzxpee\">after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Gregor Townsend has announced a 45-man Scotland squad \u00adincluding three uncapped forwards \u2013 Edinburgh\u2019s Liam McConnell and Harri Morris, and Montpellier\u2019s Alex\u00adander Masibaka. Edinburgh\u2019s Magnus Bradbury is also in contention for a first Test cap since 2022. \u00adScotland will start their campaign against USA before facing New Zealand, \u00adArgentina and Tonga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Louis Rees-Zammit is in line for an international comeback for Wales next month, 21 months after \u00adabandoning the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-518244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}