It is November 11, 2012. The New Zealand rugby team, the All Blacks, is playing Scotland at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh. Fabian Holland sits with his mother in the stands, among more than 67,000 other rugby fans. He is ten years old. His mother surprised him for his birthday with tickets for his favorite team. The New Zealanders win comfortably: 51-21. Dutch rugby player Tim Visser is on the field for Scotland. Young Holland sees him twice sad to make. A flame has been ignited.
“Tim was the example for me,” says Holland. “He showed that you don’t have to play for the Netherlands if you were born in the Netherlands.”
On November 8, 2025, thirteen years later, 23-year-old Holland himself will be on the field. In the same stadium where he saw his idols from New Zealand play for the first time, Holland will face Scotland. In the black shirt of the All Blacks. His parents, brother and sister are there and see New Zealand win 25-17.
This Saturday, Holland will play his next match for the New Zealand national rugby team, his twelfth international match. This time against Wales, as the last match of the so-called ‘Grand Slam’, a tour through Great Britain and Ireland. On Thursday he was nominated for the World Rugby Breakthrough Player of the Year –award.
The aura of the All Blacks
Fabian Holland (2002) grew up in Akersloot in North Holland, near Castricum. He started playing rugby at the age of six. From the first moment he saw the All Blacks play on television – when he was about five – he was enchanted. “The aura, what they stand for, the way they play,” he says by telephone from London.
At the age of sixteen, Holland wanted to get a taste of New Zealand rugby culture. He explored his options with his parents and eventually applied to Christchurch Boys’ High School. That is a well-known training institute for All Blacks; the boys’ school has there 46 produced, including Dan Carter and Luke Romano. Both became world champions with the All Blacks in 2015. Holland was admitted and left for Christchurch, about 19,000 kilometers from home. Initially for six months.
Patrick Coady, a teacher and coach at that high school, still remembers the first time he saw Holland. During one of his lessons, a commotion broke out in the classroom, he says via video connection. Coady walked over to see what was going on. “I looked out the window and thought: my god, how big is this boy?!” Rugby was played outside and young Holland joined in. He stood out among the other boys. “Are skillsethis speed, his physique,” says Coady. “Who the hell is this kid?, thought everyone who saw him play.”
The combination of Holland’s build – he is now 2.04 meters tall and weighs 124 kilos – and talent makes him very suitable for his position: a lockwho is part of the second row in the scrum. These must be big and strong players who do a lot of physical work: running into opponents, tackling and winning the ball in the scrum or line-out. But according to his old coaches, what distinguishes Holland most is his work ethic.
Shortly before games at Christchurch Boys’ High School, youth coach Coady recalls, Holland walked around the field alone in utter concentration. With music on his headphones, he tried to imagine his role in the match that would follow. He pretended to catch a ball, stand in a scrum or jump up for a lineout. “His teammates thought that was special,” says Coady. “But if you now see how professional teams prepare for a match, visualizing it makes a lot of sense.”
Six months at Christchurch Boys’ High School turned into two years. Holland caught the eye of a talent scout from the Highlanders, a professional team in the Super Rugby competition, a competition between teams from South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. He was invited to Dunedin for a training camp. Not much later, Holland signed with the under-twenties team. At the same time he trained and played with the men of the local rugby club.
Divine status
The All Blacks are currently second in the world rankings, just behind South Africa, but the team has a legendary reputation both in New Zealand and beyond. “A All Black has a kind of divine status in our country,” says Lee Piper, his host parent in Dunedin, with whom Holland stayed for a few months in 2020. There are thousands of young boys and girls, he says, who give everything to one day wear the coveted black shirt. “It sounds a bit brutal, but a professional rugby career in New Zealand works a bit like a factory,” says Piper. “Those who are not good enough are simply pushed aside.”
According to Piper and Coady, it is Holland’s mentality that led to him being called up to the All Blacks within a few years of training in Christchurch, last July. “Fabian is a once-in-a-generation player,” says Piper. He still celebrates Christmas with his old host family. In addition to his enormous appetite – young Fabian ate up to ten eggs a day – Piper remembers his ambition and fighting spirit. “Even when he was 18 and playing against experienced men in their 30s, he never took a step back.”
Holland knows that he has sacrificed a lot at a young age to realize his dream in New Zealand. He finds it painful that he had to miss important moments for his family. Holland left for the other side of the world when his brother Quinten and sister Franka were thirteen. When the coronavirus broke out in New Zealand in 2021, the country went into a complete lockdown. Holland did not see his family for two and a half years.
In the eyes of his supervisors, he was too focused on his ambition to become a top player for a while, and he took little time for distractions outside the sport. “Precisely because he left his parental home at a young age and had to give up so much, he did not want to disappoint,” says Kane Jury, the talent manager of the Highlanders who brought in Holland.
Holland recognizes this. When he turned off the ‘rugby button’ every now and then, he says, he received a lot of support from his current teammates. “There are now many things off the field – not related to rugby – that give me energy, such as having a cup of coffee with friends, a game of cards, and calling my family in the Netherlands.”
Fabian Holland on his debut in the All Blacks shirt against France in early July.
Photo Getty Images
A ‘bookie’ for his family
In June 2025, Holland received a call from All Blacks head coach Scott Robertson. With the honorable request if he was available for the national team. Holland now met the criterion of the international rugby union: he was registered with a rugby union or club in his new country for sixty months.
At the beginning of July he made his debut in black, in a match against France in his home city of Dunedin, as the first Dutchman to play for the New Zealand team. Brother Quinten and his mother were in the stands. Holland has a fixed ritual: shortly before he goes on the field, he writes something in his ‘bookie’, always a piece about his family. “In the national team I represent my country, New Zealand. That is my home, I consider the people around me here as family,” he says. “But of course I also have my own family in the Netherlands: mom, dad, Quinten, Franka. I always write a piece in my book for them before every match.” The reason? “I just want to make them very proud.”
Fabian Holland belongs to the exceptional list of Dutch rugby players who have reached the international top. Zeno Kieft (34) played professional rugby for years for the French club La Rochelle, Tim Visser (38) for Scotland and the English Harlequins.
Kieft hopes that Holland’s story will encourage young talents to also pursue their dreams. “There is a major development in the youth of Dutch rugby,” he says on the phone. In recent years, the Dutch Rugby Union has invested in: training centers and academies throughout the country. These training programs seem to be doing their job – more than thirty Dutch men and women play rugby at a high level abroad. “It would be fantastic,” says Kieft, “if Fabian becomes the first Dutchman to become rugby world champion.” The last time New Zealand won the world title was in 2015. The next World Cup is in 2027. “But above all I hope he has a great time.”
‘A little better every day’
This Saturday the All Blacks will play their final match of the Grand Slam tour. Holland then takes a few weeks of rest in the Netherlands to see his family and friends.
Holland prefers to keep to himself what he would like to achieve in rugby. The ultimate dream would be to one day stand next to his brother on the field. Quinten Holland is, after all, also a talented rugby player and followed in the footsteps of his older brother. He left for New Zealand three years ago when he was seventeen, went to another school in Dunedin and is now also part of the Highlanders talent program. Injuries have been keeping Quinten sidelined for some time.
Apart from that family ambition, Fabian Holland views his career step by step. “I don’t try a single day for granted to take,” he says – because nothing can be taken for granted. “Just to get a little better every day.” For now, his short-term goal is simple: to still be part of the All Blacks next year.
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