Picture this; you’re 21-years-old, you’ve been the most talked about player in rugby union for a month straight, you’re playing your first senior game, your first of any kind in this code since you were a teenager, and you’ve just stepped out to start for your country at Twickenham, the home of rugby. We all know that elite athletes are cut from a different cloth but it’s worth lingering on the staggering set of circumstances that preceded Joseph-Aukuso Sua’ali’i’s Test debut.
Simply not stinking up the place with a string of errors would have been enough. If he’d managed to hold onto the ball and land a few tackles then Joe Schmidt and Rugby Australia could have argued that there was tangible hope in a return of their substantial investment in this unproven prospect. He looked the part, all 1.98m and 98kg of him. But could he handle the bright lights and weight of expectation? We had our answer shortly before kick-off.
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Just after the warm-ups were complete and with the national anthems approaching, Sua’ali’i took a moment for himself. He crouched on his haunches, looked up at the yawning stands around him and smiled. Ordinary people might have been gripped with stage fright. This young lad is clearly unfamiliar with the concept.
“Even just hearing the crowd, I just wanted to soak it in before I started playing,” he said after a player-of-the-match performance that saw him glide across one sport’s grandest backdrops without even an inkling of the narrative that surrounded him. “It was always a dream of mine to get to play overseas. My old man has always said to me that there was a big world out there and rugby brings that. Just to play today was special.”
His father came to Australia from Samoa. His maternal grandfather left Cambodia in search of a better life. Sua’ali’i may be young, but he recognises the significance of stepping out of a code often mired in parochialism and into one that has parishes around the globe.
“That was my first time representing Australia,” said the former NRL star who did in fact play union for his country as a schoolboy. “I’ve got six sisters and a brother and we all live in Australia, a safe country, so just to represent Australia for the first time in a professional arena was a very special moment for myself and my family.
“I was ready for everything, my mindset is I just want to play,” he said of his surprise inclusion in the starting XV. “I don’t want to sit and wait. That’s the best way to learn, just get on the field and play. When Joe [Schmidt] gave me the nod that I was going to play it was a very emotional time but I also knew I had to get a job done.”
Whatever his pre-match brief was, he ticked every box and then some. He set up a first half-try for Tom Wright with a one-handed off-load. He stood firm in contact with and without the ball. He used every inch of his frame to unfurl a string of NBA-style tip-ons from cross-field kicks. And in the dying seconds, when the Wallabies needed to secure the ball from the final restart of the contest, he challenged in the air and forced an England knock-on that would prove decisive in the piece. “I back myself against anyone up in the air,” he said. “I know that’s one of my strengths in this game. Anytime that ball is in the air I know I’m going to get it.”
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Still, he acknowledges that there are work-ons. England rarely challenged the 13 channel which is the hardest to defend on the pitch. And because the hosts’ rush defence was so disjointed, finding the edge came all too easy for the Wallabies. “There is a lot of growth in my game from today, I know that,” Sua’ali’i said.
His coach is backing him to learn on the job. “He is incredibly diligent around his preparation,” Schmidt said. “That diligence pays off in the way he performs. He’s still probably finding his feet in the game. There are subtleties that are different [from league]. But with that diligent work ethic, the professionalism and that athleticism that he possesses, I feel it was a really confidence-boosting debut.”
There’s an understatement. It was utterly bewildering at times. And now that he’s firmly planted his flag, is he worried that the noise around him might become overwhelming? “Honestly, I haven’t really heard [anything] until you’ve just said that just then,” he replied when asked about the external hype. “So it’s just about sticking to how I can be the best for my teammates, how I can be the best for myself every time I step onto the field.”
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