The biggest event on the American sporting calendar will have a significant South Pacific flavour when Super Bowl LX kicks off this afternoon, including New Zealand-born running back George Holani.
The 26-year-old’s Seattle Seahawks will attempt to stop the New England Patriots winning a record seventh Super Bowl in Santa Clara, California.
Holani, a back-up running back for the Seahawks, was born in New Zealand to Tongan parents but moved to the United States as a pre-schooler.
His family settled in Southern California, where his father, Saia, did construction work and his mother, Atelaite, was a caretaker for families in the Pacific Palisades.
“My parents were always working,” Holani told Medill Reports of Northwestern University. “Being the oldest sibling in the house, a lot of [my] younger siblings looked up to me. I made sure to get [them] to school whenever they needed to be walked.”
Holani’s time was split between looking after his family, playing football and studying, but financial hardship at home led to his father asking linebackers coach Terry Bullock to take him in for his final 18 months at St John Bosco High School in Bellflower, Los Angeles.
“He would just come straight home every day and do homework,” Bullock told Medill Reports. “You never had to tell him anything. He slept on my couch. He made do with very little. He comes from a big rugby family, and they’re tough. They’re Tongan and they’re like warriors.”
Because of work, Bullock said Holani’s parents saw him play only two games during his senior year. Bullock even walked Holani out on to the field ahead of St Bosco’s senior night celebration.
Despite the circumstances, Holani thrived and landed a scholarship to Boise State in Idaho. After graduating from college, he went undrafted before Seattle signed him as a free agent in May 2024. Nearly four months later, the Seahawks waived him before he re-signed to their practice squad.
He went from playing 41 total snaps that season to playing 11 straight games to start the 2025 regular season before a hamstring tear landed him on the injured reserve list in late November.
Two months later, he returned to the field in Seattle’s NFC championship game victory over the Los Angeles Rams two weeks ago, filling in after second-string back Zach Charbonnet injured his ACL.
“He was patient,” Seahawks starting running back Kenneth Walker III said. “He was continuously in meetings with us, learning, and he waited for his time to come.”
Holani has said he is keen to visit family in New Zealand in the near future, including a grandmother and brother.
He is one of six players with Polynesian heritage set to feature in the Super Bowl.
The Seahawks squad also includes nose tackle Brandon Pili, whose ancestry is Samoan on his father’s side and Inupiaq from Alaska on his mother’s side.
The Patriots include linebacker Christian Elliss (Samoan) — father Luther played for the Detroit Lions for a decade, and brothers Kaden (Atlanta Falcons) and Jonah (Denver Broncos) are also current NFL players.
New England linebacker Jahlani Tavai (Samoan) comes from a family of sporting high achievers which includes former All Blacks second-five John Schuster, an uncle.
Utah-raised Patriots nose tackle Khyiris Tonga (who unsurprisingly has Tongan heritage) had a troubled upbringing and credits his adoptive parents for helping turn his life around. That included a two-year stint as a Mormon missionary before playing college football for Brigham Young.
New England linebacker Marte Mapu is California-raised and will carry an American Samoan flag on to the field today. He is a nephew of Junior Seau, who had an incredible 20-year NFL career but tragically took his own life aged 43 in 2012, three years after retiring, and was posthumously diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
The Super Bowl will also feature several foreigners, including an Australian punter, a British coach and a Venezuelan kicker.
The game’s best-known international star is two-time All-Pro Seahawks punter Michael Dickson.
Part of a growing pipeline of Australians who have converted their kicking skills from Australian rules to American football, he is the NFL’s highest-paid punter.
Dickson could use his near-uncatchable spinning “banana kick” to give Seattle an edge today by forcing the Patriots to begin drives deep in their own half.
He recently spoke about how time at the Sydney Swans academy “definitely helped me in my transition” to the NFL.
“The access we had and the knowledge we had to be a professional – that programme helped immensely,” said the eighth-season Seahawks veteran.
Last week, a helicopter buzzed above Dickson’s Sydney hometown with a giant flag bearing the number 12, in reference to a nickname for Seahawks fans.
Patriotic pride has also underlaid British media coverage of Aden Durde, who improbably learnt American football in London’s Finsbury Park and ended up as a defensive coordinator for the Seahawks.
Durde and his older brother caught NFL fever when their single mother brought home a video of the Chicago Bears’ 1986 Super Bowl-winning team.
He played in the now-defunct NFL Europe before earning a coaching internship with the Dallas Cowboys.
“It’s a little surreal right now,” Durde told the BBC last week.
American football “has had a huge impact on my life and I hope it happens to some other people” back home, he said.
On the opposing team is Andy Borregales, set to become the first Venezuelan in a Super Bowl. The rookie kicker was born in Caracas, but at the age of 2, his family moved to Miami, where he fell in love with the sport under the guidance of his older brother, Jose.
Borregales was drafted by the Patriots in the sixth round of last year’s draft and quickly earned the starting position.
He said last week that “being here means everything, and not only for my country, but for all of Latin America — being that person that little kids can look up to and admire is a feeling you can never imagine”.
- With AFP