How family fortunes will decide title
where they played in the same East Wales Under- 11s team. Every Sunday before church, they would pass a ball about with Billy’s brother, Mako, on the green in Pontypool.
In 1997, Ebbw Vale had signed Tongan second row Kuli Faletau and a year later Pontypool, in the neighbouring valley, brought over his fellow Islander Fe’ao Vunipola, an accomplished Test hooker. In such an alien environment the Vunipola and Faletau clans stuck closely together.
They have done so ever since, surviving the schism when senior school took the Vunipolas over the English border and into a different international pipeline.
They will be proud adopted Englishmen in the Twickenham clash, just as Faletau will be a proud adopted Welshman, but afterwards they will revert to being easy- going Tongan boys.
“It’s been a theme when Wales play England that the three of us have a photo together afterwards. It’s tough to look happy when you’ve lost but regardless of the result we’re always very close,” said Faletau. “Our mothers are related somewhere down the line and our families moved to Wales about the same time.
“It’s not something you think about too much when playing the game but there’s obviously a lot of family interest in it.”
It will be Faletau’s 56th cap having missed just two Wales Tests since he made his debut in 2011. In the attritional modern game, that is a remarkable sequence.
“I am defi nitely not indestructible. I guess I’ve been fortunate or someone is looking out for me upstairs,” he said. “I’ve had a long run in the team and have been fortunate with injuries but I don’t take my place for granted. You can never be comfortable. We all have to work hard for that starting spot. I still watch internationals and pinch myself that I am going up against these players.”
His humility is genuine but his modesty misplaced.
He is the most complete No 8 in Europe and the ideal hinge in a perfectly balanced Wales back row that will start a 30th Test as a unit.
It is an area where Wales could have a telling advantage but if the Saracens steamroller starts to rumble, it is also a zone where the visitors could have their hands full.
Vunipola has emerged from the wreckage of England’s World Cup as their totemic fi gure in this championship.
“It was a tough way to go out of the World Cup but we learned from it and I hope we can keep improving,” he said.
“People respond to setbacks like the one we had in the World Cup. For me, with all the things I’ve gone through already, it has already disappeared from memory.”
A redemptive win over Wales, a fi rst Six Nations title for fi ve years and the bragging rights over Faletau would help the process of moving on still further.