FOOTY FEVER
SULIASI Vunivalu was not supposed to be here. Not yet, anyway.
How could a young man barely out of his teens step into the NRL in Round 7, after playing just 30 games of rugby league in his life, and finish the season as the NRL’s leading tryscorer?
It defies the kind of logic and pragmatism that Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy has always lived and coached by.
At the start of the season, the rugby union convert, who went to school in Auckland on a sport scholarship from his native Fiji, still had almost everything to learn about the game.
In Bellamy’s eyes, he was a raw development player and not in his immediate plans.
That was all until an unprecedented outside backs injury crisis handed Vunivalu his NRL debut on April 17.
On that day, against Wests Tigers at Leichhardt Oval, the winger scored a try with his first touch, and he has not stopped scoring since.
The NRL’s leading tryscorer will on Sunday night stalk the right wing for Melbourne as they hunt a second premiership in five years.
Storm captain Cameron Smith has seen a lot in league, but even he has been staggered by the record-setting Vunivalu’s rise from nowhere to the NRL’s biggest night at ANZ Stadium in Sydney.
“Who would have expected him to score a club record 23 tries for us?” Smith said. “At the start of the year we were probably thinking he may have got a shot maybe around Origin, or maybe just after when guys had gone through a fair bit of footy, and that’s about it. “He’s just been fantastic for us.” Smith can’t believe it, Bellamy can’t believe it and neither can the man himself. “I’m pretty stoked with where I am at the moment and I just want to thank the Lord for where he has got me to,” Vunivalu said.
“I’m pretty pumped. I didn’t see this happening.”