By Reina Va’ai
The streets of Toyota city are lit with red flags. There are hundreds of people walking shoulder to shoulder towards fan zones. Some are singing; others are dancing. In hindsight, outside a jam-packed train station probably wasn’t the best place to meet the young and talented Fijian rugby player Vatiliai Tuidraki. But there’s something about Pacific people and that intuitive, unspoken skill of being able to spot each other from miles away despite the chaos. Vatiliai sent a message that read, ‘I’m on the bridge’. Looking up, amongst a sea of red, Vatiliai raised his arms from over 100 metres away and over 100 heads, yelling ‘Ayyyy!’ Naturally, the response from one Pacific person to another in a foreign country was of course, ‘Ayyyyyyyyyy!’
Vatiliai Tuidraki has been living in Toyota city playing rugby for Toyota Verblitz for three years. Surprisingly, the Tuidraki name isn’t too unfamiliar for Japanese rugby fans. It’s actually a name that hasn’t hit Japan’s national rugby fields in a long time, 18 years to be exact. 18 years ago, Vatiliai’s father Patiliai Tuidraki played 25 tests as a winger for Fiji and Japan, including representing Japan at the Rugby World Cup in 1999. Hence, for Vatiliai, coming back to Japan was almost like returning home. ‘I was six months old when we all moved to Japan for my Dad’s rugby career. Japanese was actually my first language.’
When Vatiliai was a child living in Japan, the national rugby team wasn’t anywhere near diverse as it is now. He remembers, ‘When my Dad was here, there was only a handful of foreigners in the rugby scene. My siblings and I had to adjust to the culture and language really quickly.’ His father made the decision to take their family back to Fiji in 2001 when Vatiliai was 7 years old with the intention of potentially returning to Japan later to pursue a coaching career. Unfortunately, that dream was never realized, as his father sadly passed away in 2002 at the age of 33.
His father’s sudden death has been the driving force behind Vatiliai’s decision to return to Japan. Even though Vatiliai has played representative rugby for Fiji, New Zealand and Australia since his father’s passing, ‘it has always been a dream of mine to come back to Japan and play for the club that my Dad played for, Toyota Verblitz’. When Vatiliai was the captain of Fiji’s Under 20’s team, there were offers for him to play all over the world, and as fate would have it, the Toyota club recognized his talent and surname immediately. ‘Some of the coaching staff we have now actually played with my Dad. There were other offers to go to other clubs, but when Toyota heard that I was interested in moving to Japan, they wanted to give me this opportunity. Now I’m actually here playing for them, and it’s just awesome.’
Whilst he appreciates the warm welcome from his adopted home, Vatiliai acknowledges the struggle that many Pacific players experience when they pursue professional rugby careers overseas. Vatiliai says, ‘One of the hardest things about living here is the lack of your core support group, like your family and friends. It gets better, though, because when we first came, there were hardly any Pacific Islanders. But now you actually have three or four Pacific Islanders in every team, so whenever we go and play another team in Tokyo and stuff, we get to catch up with those boys. There’s a feeling of home every place you go to in Japan.’
Being a Pacific Island rugby player in Japan has clearly allowed him to lead a life that he’s proud of, and it’s encouraging for Vatiliai to see so many other Pacific people walking on a similar journey. ‘It’s probably an Islander thing but when I see Island boys in the other teams, like if I see a Tongan, I say, ‘Hey dox!’ Or if I see a Samoan, ‘Sole!’ We all enjoy catching up because there’s that immediate connection, we’re just drawn to each other.’
With the support from other players, his incredible talent, discipline and passion for the sport, Vatiliai has clearly managed to plant his feet firmly in the plains his father once stood on. Honoured and grateful, Vatiliai’s journey is nowhere near over. ‘I hope that my Dad is proud to see that I’ve achieved my goal of being in the same club as him and that he sees how I’ve been able to provide for our family in Fiji. My ultimate goal is that I hope I get to wear the same jersey he did at the World Cup.’ For a young man that has already made an incredible commitment to pursuing his dreams, he’ll be yelling, ‘Dox!’ ‘Sole!’ and of course, ‘Ayyyy!’ from the international stage in no time – loud enough for the heavens to hear.
