Vunivalu captures devoted audience
HAVING bought a television for his family back in Fiji, Suliasi Vunivalu knows they can only watch him if he’s playing first grade.
After all, Sky Sports’ rugby league coverage into the Pacific nation doesn’t extend to games featuring the Eastern Suburbs Tigers, Melbourne’s feeder club in the Queensland Cup.
‘‘I’m sure it is around 100,’’ Vunivalu says when asked how many people gather around his family’s television set.
‘‘Back home, they love it, they are into rugby league now. Every game, they turn up in big numbers back home to watch me play. It’s a pleasure to be playing on TV back home for them to watch. It’s just special if they’re happy and I’m happy.’’
Vunivalu is a rookie, but that term doesn’t truly reflect just how new he is to rugby league. Asked how many games he has played in the 13-man code, the 20-year-old replied: ‘‘It would be less than 30.’’
Twenty-one of those have been in first grade. The result has been 23 tries, the most of any player in the NRL this year, a feat all the more remarkable given he didn’t make his debut until round seven.
‘‘We’re at the grand final, I am still pinching myself,’’ Vunivalu says. ‘‘I can’t believe I’m here.’’
Neither can the Storm. No other club has such a knack of unearthing talent from the unlikeliest places, but the rise of ‘‘Suli’’ is the most unlikely of all.
Storm recruiter Paul Bunn got a tip there was a youngster worth watching in the curtain-raiser to a Melbourne Rebels game at AAMI Park. It featured Saint Kentigern College of New Zealand, the alma mater of former Storm winger Matt Duffie, who sat alongside Bunn for the rugby fixture. Within moments, the pair were sitting mouths agape, incredulous at what was unfolding before them.
‘‘Bunnie was scouting the No 8 in the team at the time, I was watching it as a spectator when I saw this Fijian kid,’’ Duffie recalls. ‘‘He was flying out of the line, crushing these poor fellas. Every time he had the ball he had two or three blokes hanging off him, it was pretty amazing.
‘‘I said to Bunnie ‘don’t worry about the No 8, look at this winger’. He was 15 when he played that game but was by far the best player on a field stacked with 17 and 18-year-olds.’’
Vunivalu spurned offers from professional rugby franchises to sign with the Storm, but he made an inauspicious start to his league career. It was a steep learning curve, but there were few opportunities to put into practice what he had gleaned at training. The winger was regularly sidelined due to injuries that resulted in knee, thumb and shoulder operations.
When he was on the field, he wasn’t always on the field.
‘‘The first couple of under-20s games he played, he’d run or get tackled out [over the sideline],’’ Duffie says.
‘‘It took him a bit of time to realise it’s not like rugby union where if you get tackled out it’s not as big an issue. Early on some of the boys laughed when it happened.’’
Despite his imposing frame – all 1.92m and 100kg of it – Vunivalu wasn’t a standout in the lower grades. Melbourne are proud of the fact they never hand out an NRL jersey to a player unless he is truly ready to wear it, but they had little choice but to blood Vunivalu before his time. The club had an injury crisis in its outside backs and the young Fijian was, in coach Craig Bellamy’s words, the last winger standing.
‘‘The thing about him is he plays better in the NRL than he did in the Q Cup [Queensland Cup],’’ Storm assistant coach Adam O’Brien says.
Vunivalu’s feats have earned comparisons with another Storm product, Israel Folau. Both have tremendous speed for men their size and the ability to almost always come down with the ball when they go up for it.
For Storm staffers, the aggression on the field is at odds with the man off it.
‘‘He’s a wonderfully humble, beautiful kid,’’ O’Brien says.
‘‘You should see him with his [three-month-old son] – he’s just had a baby. He is such a gentle bloke.
‘‘He’s got that innate ability to flick that switch when he is out there and turn into the Hulk.’’ The Sun-Herald