Alama Ieremia

Namulauulu Alama Ieremia (born 27 October 1970) is a New Zealand rugby union coach and former international player for Western Samoa and New Zealand.

Early life Ieremia was born in Sinamoga, a suburb of Apia, Samoa. He made his debut on 13 June at Apia Park against Tonga, with Western Samoa winning 22–17. He earned 5 caps for Western Samoa, his last coming against the All Blacks at Eden Park on 31 July 1993, New Zealand winning 35–13, with the match being the first official international between the two countries.

With the lack of eligibility regulations in rugby before the professional era, Ieremia haven proven himself at Super Rugby level, was selected for the All Blacks in 1994. Ieremia's promotion to the All Blacks was rapid, due to the shock 2–0 series loss to France in June 1994. He was subsequently introduced for the three tests against the Springboks, playing at second five eighth with Frank Bunce, another who had been blooded by Samoa at test level, outside him at centre.

Ieremia was named in the All Blacks squad for the 1995 Rugby World Cup, but played only the pool match against Japan, where he also scored his first ever international try. For most of 1995 and 1996 the All Blacks' preference was for Walter Little as Bunce's partner and it was only an injury to Little that gave Ieremia his first extensive run as a regular test selection in 1997. An injury sustained during the 1998 Super 12 ruled him out of All Black selection that year, but he returned in 1999, and for the first part of the international season, he was used mainly at centre but for the bulk of the 1999 Rugby World Cup later in the year he was back at second five.

In 2000, he was again an All Black first choice, primarily as a centre.

When he left New Zealand rugby at the end of the 2000 season to take up an overseas contract, Ieremia had played 40 matches for the All Blacks, including 30 tests.

Ieremia also represented Western Samoa at the 1993 Rugby World Cup Sevens and New Zealand at the 1997 Rugby World Cup Sevens.

Honors

New Zealand Rugby World Cup / Webb Ellis Cup Runners-up: 1995 Bledisloe Cup Winners: 1997 Tri Nations Winners: 1996, 1997, 1999 Runners-up: 2000

Western Samoa South Pacific Championship Winners: 1992, 1993

Wellington National Provincial Championship Winners: 2000

Coaching career After retiring from playing rugby in 2004, Ieremia took up a coaching role with Suntory Sungoliath, specializing as backs and attack coach. After two seasons in Japan, which saw Suntory make it to the final for the first time in over five years, Ieremia returned to New Zealand in 2007 as an assistant coach with the Wellington Lions. He helped guide Wellington to their second consecutive final, only to lose to Auckland 23–14. He was later named as the WRFU Academy head coach, a position he held for a year.

On 25 September 2008, Alama Ieremia was appointed to the Hurricanes coaching team for the 2009 and 2010 Super 14 season. Ieremia earned the accolade of becoming the first former player to become part of the coaching staff of the team. In his first season as attack coach, he helped the Hurricanes to third in the regular season, before losing to the Chiefs in the semi-final 14–10. Despite this, the Hurricanes had scored more points than any other team of 380, their nearest rivals being the Blues with 339. The following year, saw the Hurricanes drop to eighth on the table, failing to make the play-off for the first time since 2007. When Colin Cooper left the side in 2010, Mark Hammett retained Ieremia as the attack coach for the 2011 and 2012 Super Rugby season. In 2012, he was praised in the media for bring through young All Blacks talent, and therefore was retained for a further 2 seasons. When Hammett left the club in 2014, Ieremia went with him, joining the Samoan national team as attack coach. His first game was a 33–14 loss to Japan. In February 2015, he was appointed interim general manager of Samoan rugby's high performance unit.

Head coach of Samoa On 23 December 2015, he was named head coach of the Manu Samoa, taking over from Stephen Betham, who resigned after the 2015 Rugby World Cup.

In his first match in charge, he led Samoa to a 19–all draw against Georgia, in which saw 9 players making their debut. A week later they went down to Fiji 26–16, before finishing their June internationals with a 30–10 victory over Tonga seeing Samoa finish second in the 2016 World Rugby Pacific Nations Cup. During the 2016 end-of-year internationals, Ieremia led Samoa to a single victory, beating Canada 25–23. The other tests saw Samoa lose to France 52–8 and Georgia 20–16.

In the 2017 mid-year internationals, Samoa lost all four games. This included a 78–0 loss to New Zealand, which was the first time since 1996 that Samoa had failed to score any points in a test match. The following week saw Wales defeat Manu Samoa in Apia for the first time since 1986, losing 19–17. The 2017 World Rugby Pacific Nations Cup saw Samoa finish in last place for the first ever time, this came following a first loss to Samoa since 2011, 30–26, and a historic win for Fiji in Apia 38–16. It was the first time since 2002 that Fiji had won in Samoa, and set a new winning margin in Samoa of 22 points.

Following a review following Samoa's June/July campaign, Ieremia resigned as Samoan head coach on 5 August. He left the post with a 20% win rate, just 2 wins from 10 matches.

Auckland coach In December 2017 he was appointed head coach for the Auckland Rugby Union.

Honors Samoa (as assistant coach) IRB Pacific Nations Cup Winners: 2014 (joint with Japan) Runners-up: 2015

Wellington (as assistant coach) National Provincial Championship Runners-up: 2007