Billy set for love match
WALES versus England is the nearest the Six Nations approaches to genuine loathing – particularly from the western side of the great divide – but Billy Vunipola is banking on love conquering hate on Saturday.
The England No 8 spent five of his formative years in Wales after his father, a Tongan international, signed for Pontypool and moved his family to the principality. The memories from growing up in the Valleys, where he played for East Wales at junior level for three seasons, mean it would be impossible for Vunipola to manufacture any grudge for this match.
But his practical advice for his team-mates is to banish the red mist too if they want to win in Cardiff. “I think love works better than hate because you have a clear mind. With hate you think everything’s wrong and it’s not your fault, it’s everyone else’s fault,” said Vunipola.
“I’m not saying we can’t fight the emotional battle at the same time. We have to. It’s important we match up to it because we know it’s coming. They have said it themselves and it’s no joke. We would be kidding ourselves if we went there and said we can just do our job and everything would fall into place. This game runs a little bit deeper, and everyone knows that.
“It’s a big game but there’s no hate there. We have a lot of family friends, people who helped us out. And when I say helped us out, I mean really helped us out when we first came over here.
“There’s a lot of love for people in Wales. I think where we kind of fall apart is when England-Wales comes into it, that’s when we divide.
“But that’s only once or twice a year and it’s nothing crazy – they will support Wales and I will play for England so they won’t be supporting me.”
Recently the Vunipola brothers went back to Wales to attend the funeral of Pontypool kit man Terry ‘Tiger’ Gordon. “We were very naive when we first came over and didn’t think it would be that cold. We came in the winter in shorts and a T-shirt. You know when it’s cold and you can see yourself breathing? We thought that was the coolest thing ever until we got home and it was still there,” said Vunipola.
“We pretended we were like the old guys smoking but it wasn’t cool when you were trying to go to sleep and it was still cold. Terry took pity on my dad and us as his little family with extra duvets, extra pillows, jumpers – all those little things. He was a great guy.”
Being raised as adopted Welshmen meant adopting a certain stance when it came to England’s rugby team.
Vunipola supported Australia in the 2003 World Cup final. When the time came for the family to follow mum Singa’s posting as a Methodist minister and move to Bristol, 11-yearold Billy pledged a lifetime allegiance to the dragon.
He wrote his Pontypool Schools coach Dawson Jones a letter promising that he would never play for England. So far he has broken that promise 38 times. The Welsh accent his brother retains has gone – “when you go to Harrow they don’t understand you” – but he does retain a strong bond with the place.
“We hold a lot of people in high regard in Wales,” he said.
Could Wales have hung onto him? There was an Exiles programme in place when he left but England were quickly out of the blocks to take him into their system. By the age of 15 he was already in the under-18s set-up and on the way to a career in white. “My allegiance is firmly with England now,” he said.