Suliasi Vunivalu pleaded with his father for his first pair of rugby boots. When they were a proud gift, he wore them to bed on the first night.
True story. Vunivalu was a tall, athletic Fijian youngster even then at 14 when his mind was full of rugby dreams, never a detour to rugby league.
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“My first boots for the first rugby school I went to...white with a black tick. I went to sleep with them on when I first got them,” he still remembers fondly.
He’d watch Super Rugby or Tests in the old Tri-Nations on TV with father Sailosi, family and excitable villagers in Bua on Fiji’s second largest island, a four-hour ferry ride from Suva. There’d be cheers and shouts no matter who was playing. Fijians have always happily picked different teams to support or the one with a Fijian flavour.
His father was a Brumbies fan who thought Stirling Mortlock was the best. The young Vunivalu supported the Crusaders.
Those in Australia who know Vunivalu best for his try-scoring deeds for the Melbourne Storm in the NRL will call him a code-hopper.
What he has done is hop back to his first love. Otherwise, he could not talk so strongly about his desire to prove himself with the Wallabies and next year’s World Cup in France as his grandest goal.
“I haven’t really done anything in union since my debut season last year was cut-off (by hamstring injuries),” Vunivalu said.
“I want to prove myself and make my goal of going to the World Cup and playing for the Wallabies.
“I started playing rugby as a kid. We were mad rugby fans in Fiji. I watched World Cups on TV and it was always a goal growing up to play in one.”
Even when he was recruited at 18 by the Storm for his seven-year journey through rugby league, the Rugby World Cup urge never left him.
Like dual internationals Brad Thorn and Sonny Bill Williams pursuing their dreams to become All Blacks, boyhood dreams have a power like no other.
Vunivalu is driven by his. When he excelled at Auckland’s Saint Kentigern College as a boarder, the excitement for rugby was everywhere.
“I liked Joe Rokocoko, the All Blacks winger, as a kid. He went to the same school,” Vunivalu said of one Fijian role model.
He doesn’t have the smooth spin move that Rokocoko made famous but he has the same knack for reaching the tryline.
How Vunivalu conjures a method to dot down a ball one-handed just inside the corner post is as good as any finisher in the world. Give him a 10m run to the corner with a little traffic ahead of him and he’ll find a way whether horizontal to the ground or piercing a cover tackle.
A fend and bump in that 10m zone got him there against the Crusaders. He bopped up for a switch pass from Tate McDermott to stretch over the line to score against the Blues.
You can only call them teasing blinks of his thrilling potential for now. Wallabies coach Dave Rennie sees them too.
The Queensland Reds have played 29 games over the past two seasons and Vunivalu has only played 15 largely due to the hamstring tear that required two surgeries.
“That’s the goal right there...I never want to talk about hamstrings again,” he said with a smile.
“I played seven games straight (for the Reds) to finish Super Rugby without pulling up with any tightness. The hamstrings have never felt so good.”
He thanks Dean Benton, the Wallabies’ Head of Athletic Performance, for that. He's a man he can trust after time together at the Storm.
Rennie knows he has a rare weapon at his disposal in Vunivalu’s fast-twitch frame of 1.92m and near-enough 100kg. The Wallabies were still fielding shorter locks in the 1980s.
Vunivalu’s grand final pedigree on the NRL’s biggest stage when winning the 2017 and 2020 premierships has given him some armour for Test rugby.
That feeds his confidence for any challenge on debut against England in this third Test decider at the SCG but he’s also wise enough to know he’s still learning all the time.
He’s appreciating having Thorn as his Reds coach. More than anyone, Thorn knows the transition from league to rugby never comes overnight. The coach publicly called for patience and dampened expectations on Vunivalu while he was rebuilding confidence and making modest strides back from injury in April.
“Thorny has really helped me. He knows first hand how hard the game is. My first games I was a bit rusty after surgery but he was always supporting,” Vunivalu said.
Friend and fellow Fijian Marika Koroibete is always his first sounding board around the Wallabies.
“Since my first time in camp with the Wallabies, Marika is who I go to the most to ask questions. I’ll go to others too like Quadey (Cooper) and ‘Rabs’ (James O’Connor) when I have no idea about something," he said.
Vunivalu knows that Koroibete’s remarkable appetite for work on the field is the perfect example for him to follow.
“Marika’s work off the ball is crazy. For me that means trying to stay busy all the time, working from side to side on the field to be an option,” Vunivalu said.
He still runs quite tall. The English will love wrestling and holding up a player like that for turnovers.
“Trying to improve my work in contact and getting that low height. I’m working on those things," Vunivalu said.
“I also looked at the South African wingers last year and how they compete for every kick.”
Vunivalu has a Folau-like knack with the way he soars for cross-kicks in the air. He swallows them as easily as the rest of us toss down Jaffas at the movies.
O’Connor, for one, rates him “one of the most gifted I’ve played with...things just open up if you put the ball wide.”
The day is coming when coaches and fans of the Wallabies get to see for themselves.
“My dad is a Wallabies' fan and his favourite player was Mortlock,” Vunivalu said.
“To wear a gold jersey would make him happy.”
