INJURIES prevented him from doing himself justice in his first two years in the Storm system, so Melbourne really did not know exactly what they had on their hands with Fijian winger Suliasi Vunivalu.
Vunivalu, signed by the Storm when he was at boarding school in Auckland, has scored 22 tries from his first 17 NRL matches, but modestly baulks at comparisons with Israel Folau, another winger who made an instant impact in the NRL.
“I reckon Izzy Folau is too good. I’m still developing,” the quietly-spoken Vunivalu said.
The 20-year-old has propelled himself into a tie with Folau’s mark from 2007 when the future Wallaby was 18-years-old.
“We worked out by the time Suli made his NRL debut in Round 7 this year he’d played fewer than 30 games of rugby league,” said Storm football manager Frank Ponissi.
“He’s learnt the game of rugby league on the run, so it’s been remarkable what he’s done.
“He started in our under-20s in 2014 and as soon as he came over from New Zealand it was apparent he had an enormous amount of ability, but he was incredibly raw.
“He’d never played the game. So he’d get tackled into touch a lot, which in rugby union is not as dramatic (a mistake as it is in league). His positional play was a bit out, but his athleticism and his ability to catch a ball were from the early days very evident.
“He had a body that was still growing and he suffered a few injuries again in 2015, when he was brought into our fulltime squad and he showed some tremendous signs in Queensland Cup matches.”
As the tries have piled up in the past two months, Storm coach Craig Bellamy has repeatedly been asked to compare Vunivalu with Folau.
“He’s probably a little quicker than Israel at this age. Izzy was a little bit more thick set,” Bellamy said.
“They are both really good in the air. What Izzy was doing was a little foreign in the game (in his leaping for bombs). A lot of wingers can do those things in the air now. Suli is one of them.
“They are good respectful kids off the field.”
Storm recruitment chief Paul Bunn’s Kiwi scouts tipped in 2013 that they had a live one on their hands in Vunivalu.
“Our recruitment is not so much about the quality of the player. It’s also about the players who you think want to buy into the culture,” Ponissi said.
“The majority of our players have come from the Queensland and New Zealand markets since the club started.
“Bunny has a terrific network in Queensland and New Zealand. They’d been tracking him for a while.
“Everyone could see he was a star in junior rugby union and a lot of clubs would have seen him.
“It’s a tough market in New Zealand because the players are all very driven to be an All Black, even a young Fijian boy going to school in New Zealand. It’s about finding if those young players there have an interest in rugby league, an ambition even. For some players, rugby league is a very attractive option. Even though he hadn’t played rugby league he had watched a fair bit of it on TV in New Zealand.”
