Vili Ma’asi
In the car journey from Cardiff to Newcastle with team-mate Epi Taione, Vili Ma’asi broke down and couldn’t stop crying. He was 26 and had just said goodbye to Tonga for a professional rugby life. The only problem was, he didn’t have a club yet.
If you don’t live on Tonga’s main island of Tongatapu, where around 70 per cent of the country’s 108,000 inhabitants live, then getting medical care hasn’t always been easy.
For instance, if you were in Neiafu, a decent-sized town of 6,000, on the island of Vava’u (one of the 36 inhabited islands in Tonga – there’s 176 in total), and you had a medical issue circa 1999, then the person attending to your needs could well have been a young Tongan hooker by the name of Vili. “When I finished at school, I didn’t do anything for a year, except, you know, try and find a job and drink kava,” explains Vili Ma’asi, from the comfort of his favourite chair in his Peterborough home. “Then I got a job working as a health officer, as a community nurse, in the outer islands, in places that the main hospital can’t access.
“They have health centres in the remote places, and we were like doctors. They trained us for three years, we qualified, and we basically did what doctors did – we prescribed medication, we treated people, we did minor stitching, we learnt to multitask. The hospital was five hours away, so unless the case was major, we’d deal with it.”
Did he deal with anything serious? “Fortunately, no,” says Vili. “I did stitch a few people up though, it was usually just the minor cuts from a night out. Saturday mornings were always busy as people had been out on Friday drinking and fighting, and would turn up with cuts. But, it was a job.”
By this time, Vili had already started to find his way in Tongan rugby. The fourth of seven boys, he’d grown up just outside the capital of Nuku’alofa. He’d attended boarding school initially, where they taught him discipline. “There was always farming to do,” he says, you’d go into the bush after school and do a couple of hours work. There’s corporal punishment too, so if you misbehave, then…
“It’s more like the army really,” he continues, “you have to dress nicely, iron your shirt, make sure you’re clean.”
When his mum passed away, his father brought Vili and his brothers to nearby schools closer to him. “My dad raised seven kids on his own, which is hard, but moving us closer made life a bit easier,” he explains.
All the brothers played rugby, but Vili was a late starter. Like every Tongan, he’d played schoolboy rugby, but not consistently, and not even every year. In his last term though, he played and they won their age-grade competition.
It didn’t spark anything, but a friend of his remembered the feat and, when Vili had left school, and was ‘job hunting’, he suggested he come and join him at his club. “I went for the social side,” he says. “I was backrower then, I always wanted to be a backrower, never a hooker.”
As a teenager, he’d play his first game every Saturday with the under-21 side. “It would be the under-21s and seconds in the morning from 9-12pm, then the senior rugby from 1pm until 5pm. I’d play all of the under-21 game, then be on the bench for the senior team in the afternoon and play another 30 minutes or so.
“I don’t think club rugby is the same as when we used to play back in the day,” he continues. “It was quite serious, the size of the players was unbelievable, and for young boys like me against the bigger boys – ooof, it was brutal. The physicality was unbelievable, and they were massive.”
After the first couple of years, he started finding his feet. “I wasn’t that skilful, my rugby ability wasn’t that good, but I always worked hard, and after two years I could see in myself that I could do it,” he says. “People started to recognise me for what I did on the field and when I started playing permanently for the first team we won the shield [in 1996/97] and that was the major competition in Tongan club rugby.
“We never got paid in club rugby, there’s never money involved in Tongan club rugby, we just loved the sport, we want to play rugby and the reward was coming overseas, or playing for Tonga.”
The latter was the first to happen. “I had a few trials in 1996 and didn’t make it, then I got picked for the ten-a-side tournament in Malaysia, and I had a feeling I wasn’t far off.
“I did well in the club competition and they said ‘if you want to play for Tonga you need to play hooker’, it was a tough one, but I was keen to wear that red jersey, that’s how I ended up playing hooker.”
The position switch worked and he was selected to tour the UK in 1997. “It was a big step up,” he recalls. “We came here and played a lot of games within a month, and for us local Tongan boys everything was new. Even the bus ride from Heathrow to Redruth for the first game, we’d never travelled that far on a bus.”
Adapting to his new position didn’t make it any easier. “I could feel myself struggling – the throwing, the scrum, I’d never done it before. I’d practised lineout throws but it’s not the same as live lineouts.
“We played in Bristol, Edinburgh – all by bus – and then came to Wales, where I started my first match. Ooh, that was tough. A rainy, muddy, cold game in Swansea. Scott Gibbs was quite a handful. They smashed us [46-12] but it was a great experience.”
The results were much the same whoever they played. “We were playing teams at the highest level, who’d been playing together for two months at least, and we were brought together from all over the place and hadn’t played together.”
To Vili, the bigger shocks were off the field. “It was all very, very new to me,” he recalls. “Food-wise it was different too; I remember my first taste of salmon – I’d never tasted it before. And we ate a lot of pasta, never had that before either. In Tonga, you normally just eat the root crops and we love meat. Eating the food in the hotels, we just didn’t feel we’d eaten anything, so we always wanted to go and get KFCs after.”
When he returned to Tonga, after finishing his training to be a health officer on the main island, he was posted in Neiafu to the north. “I still got picked for training squads and trials,” he says. “I had a trial for the 1999 Rugby World Cup squad but didn’t make it, same in 2000, another trial, didn’t make it. Then in 2001, I came down to the main island for a tournament with the Vava’u side and we did really well and it revived my career with the Tongan team. I was thinking if I didn’t get in at this point, then I’d never get called back.
“We had this tour coming up [in 2001] and they called about 50 local players into the squad and we trained there for a month, to try and get into the main squad. It was brutal, fitness every day, but that group of people were so determined to try and get onto that plane. Luckily, about eight of us got picked.
“I said to myself, ‘right, I’ll get to England, and stay there and find a club’. I needed to make my rugby count.”
Aleki Lutui was Vili’s competition in the squad. “We played Scotland A, Scotland, Wales A and Wales,” he says. “Aleki was really good at the time, he was the chief, and he played the first Test against Scotland and I played the A game. Then I started against Wales, and he played the A side.”
Now 26, Vili knew that he had to make his move after the Wales game, as it was the last match of the tour. “I didn’t want to go back to work in Tonga,” he says. “Epi [Taione] was popular up at Newcastle at the time, and he was from my club back home, so I was great friends with him. I rang him up before the tour and said I wanted to try and make it in England, and he said ‘yeah sure, come and stay with me’. And that was it, I’d decided.”
When the time came, it didn’t play out quite as he’d intended. “After our last game in Wales, in Cardiff, we went out and stayed out all night, but Epi had said, ‘we are leaving at five in the morning’ because Newcastle want me to be on the bench for the club game up there.
“So I was upstairs packing my clothes and stuff and he was waiting downstairs in reception. It was the hardest time for me to decide to stay here, because I knew the whole team will be leaving the next morning to go home.
“Epi had been waiting for half an hour, and he phoned from reception and said. ‘are you coming or not? We need to go’.
“It was so hard,” repeats Vili, “because you know, all this was new to me. The last time I’d come to Wales it was different, I went home, but this time I had to stay.
“Finally I thought, ‘I’m going to stay’, and I came down and Epi was waiting. He wasn’t driving, some Samoan guy from Newcastle, was driving.
“I sat in the backseat and I didn’t even know how far the car drive was from Cardiff to Newcastle, but I was homesick already. I just sat there like a cry baby, and cried all the way.
“I felt like something was missing – I was already missing Tonga.”
It wasn’t as if Vili was worried about not having any job offers, he’d had one only hours before. “There was an agent who came to me after the Wales game and said, ‘oh Vili there’s a club interested in me – Penzance and Newlyn.
“I told Epi and he spoke to the agent and said, ‘I’m taking Vili up to Newcastle, but if they’re still keen, tell them to phone me’. It then went quiet for a week.
“One of Epi’s friends Soa – Otuvaka, who sadly died from a brain tumour a few years later – was a cousin of mine and I went to Manchester, where he was playing. I had a go there, it didn’t work. And then, after two weeks, the chairman of Penzance rang Epi, and said they were very keen for me to come down for a trial.
“At the time, Inga Tuigamala [the former Samoa and All Black back] was up at Newcastle, his career was coming to an end and he was looking at other things, so Epi passed the details on to Inga to sort the deal. They wanted to send me by train – again I didn’t know how far a train from Newcastle to Penzance was – and Inga said, ‘no, that’s too far for a Tongan to travel, I’ll send Vili by plane, and you will reimburse me’. So I got the flight from Newcastle to Heathrow then to Newquay.”
He fell for the place immediately. “I felt the vibes, they were very positive, and there were two Fijians there, which made things easier too,” he says. “I had a flat facing the sea, and it felt like home. I got there Tuesday, trained on Thursday and then benched first game.
“It was a home game, but I only played two minutes, and I said to Inga, ‘I only played two minutes’. He said, ‘right I’m going to talk to the coach, if it’s carrying on like that, I’ll take you somewhere else’.”
With another offer on the table already from Swansea – who had a decent Samoan contingent too – Vili suddenly had options. “The coach at Pirates, Kevin Moseley told Inga, ‘Vili will be involved the week after, I promise you’, and I came off the bench and then started against Redruth. After that, they said, ‘okay, we’ll sign you for the rest of the season’.”
The contract gave Vili a house, flights back home, and money on top. “It was quite decent, at that level, we were National Two South and I was able to live off it, big time.
“We got promoted the first season to National One (now the Championship), and they’ve been there ever since.”
Penzance & Newlyn became the Cornish Pirates and new coaching staff arrived in the form of Jim McKay [who would later coach the Wallabies] and, later, John McKee [now coach of Fiji]. With them, came a raft of new players. “There was a lot of changes in coaching staff, backroom staff, players coming in, players leaving. I knew that if the club wanted to go further, they needed to make those changes.
“There was one time and they were going to get rid of me. Jim McKay, John McKee, he was my forwards coach at the time, brought their players in and I knew I was in trouble. I had to bring my A game otherwise I was gone.
“The first time they told me [I was going to leave] was late March, and it was tough. I’d been there a few years, I was part of it, and it was like family for me. I thought to myself I was going to play there for rest of my career.
“I was close to going to France, at the time I was talking to a club there, but after a month the Pirates came back to me. One hooker who was supposed to stay was going up north instead and they said, ‘I know we said we wanted to get rid of you, but…’
“I thought to myself, this is my club, my family was there, I want to stay, and carry on, and that’s how I signed for only a year 2006/2007. That was my most enjoyable, best year, since I’d been there.
“I played a lot of games, almost every game, I had a very good season and so did the team, and it was a family. Even though there was a lot of new players that year, we felt we were brothers. We’d play a game Saturday, go out together, almost every weekend, even the coaches, that made things even more enjoyable – the off-field stuff.”
Vili had two of the three sons from his first marriage living with him in England. Combined with a new family that would eventually extend to four more children, he always put their needs first. When an offer came from Premiership newcomers Leeds, he couldn’t turn it down, and had to leave his Cornish home. He also had his family back home to consider. “I was sending money back home,” he says. “Money to your family, your parents, pretty much everyone. They expect, no they don’t expect, but they ask. They think you’ve got the whole of England, it’s like payback. It’s normal for us Tongans to help each other.
“At the time, it wasn’t too bad, I got a bit to share,” he continues. “These days, yes, I’m not getting what I used to, but then it was okay.”
It was around this time that Vili called time on his Tongan career. Since that first cap, he’d amassed 31 more. “After my first season in England, they called me back into the squad in 2002,” says Vili. “I played almost every game that year, and then got picked for the squad for the world cup in 2003. You always dream to be in that competition, it was a dream come true. We didn’t do well but to be part of the experience was the highlight of my career.
“We had a great game against Wales, we pushed them to the edge, we were close but not close enough [they lost 27-20].
“Willy O [Viliami Ofahengaue] came in as head coach and then I was in and out of the squad but in 2006/2007 a new coach came in and they phoned me to see if I was available. They wanted me to be part of the Pacific Nations that year but I didn’t go.
“I think Tonga were trying to qualify, but I wanted to focus on my club, because it was the right time to do that – I was getting older, I was 32. You want to play more for your country, but there are other priorities you have to focus on.”
The coach tried again, and again, right up to eve of the Rugby World Cup, where he could’ve just walked into the squad, but he turned it down. Instead choosing to focus on the season ahead with his new club, Leeds. “I needed a good pre-season,” he says. “If you go to the world cup and then you come back, and you’re not doing well, what are you going to do after? What about your family? It’s alright if you’re by yourself, but if you’ve got your family you’ve got to consider the outcome, that was the main thing for me.”
Leeds also meant another step up the career ladder. “Going to Leeds was like moving from Tonga, I was homesick leaving Cornwall,” he says. “I’d never been somewhere else for that long, but I had to move. I always wanted to play as high as I could get, and I was lucky enough to get the move to Leeds. Stuart [Lancaster] had spotted me in the Championship which Leeds had just won and wanted to sign me.”
He spent three seasons with the club, two in the Premiership, with one season in the Championship in between. His final campaign ended in relegation and his three-year-contract wasn’t renewed. “They released me,” he says. “I took it on the chin, and said ‘it’s not the end of the world, thanks for the opportunity, it happens’.”
By now 35, there was still time for one more Championship club. “To be honest, London Welsh wasn’t too bad money-wise, it’s just living in London,” he says of his next club. “If I had that money in Cornwall, it would have been fine, it was living in London that was killing it, paying £1,200 a month on rent.”
The season went well. “We won the promotion, and they said, ‘thank you’ and released me.”
Were you surprised? “Sort of,” he admits. “I’d love to have stayed, but I was 36 at the time. I had a good season, not starting, but I was on and off, I thought I had Bs and Cs with them, but the coach had different views, and I understand that.”
With no back-up plan and seven children [he had four more with his second wife], rugby was still the only viable option. “I was talking to smaller clubs, Redruth and Hull, but then Redruth fell through. Hull stuck with it and I went up to train with them, I saw the coach, and just thought ‘we’re going to move to Hull’.
“Then at the last minute Paul Turner [head coach at Ampthill] phoned me, he’d got my number from Lyn Jones, the coach at London Welsh. I knew Paul from the Cornish Pirates because Newport used to come down and spend a week of pre-season with us, training with us and then playing a game.”
Like most of us, he’d never heard of Ampthill. He spoke to the director of rugby Mark Lavery and was sold. “Mark said I’ll sort out a house, give you this, give you that, I was pretty happy and it was, ‘right, we’re moving up to Bedfordshire’.”
He broke down en route in an old Toyota Safira full of mini Ma’asis. “We were bringing the whole family, and we came up on the M1 and the car broke down, we were in Watford. “We rang Mark, he came down, towed us to the nearest Shell station. He asked, ‘How many of you guys are there?’ I said, ‘there’s a few of us’ and opened the car with all the kids and the missus packed in. He phoned his driver up who came and picked up the kids and the missus, and I went to training.”
At Ampthill, he spent four seasons helping Turner and Lavery take the side on a journey that would end in the Championship, although Vili had to retire through injury before it was completed at the age of 41. “Mark wanted me to stay, he said I could coach the second team and still get paid. That guy, and Paul, were like fathers to me, they did so much for me.
“But I said to him, I needed to challenge myself, let me go and I’ll build my trade as a coach. If I’m good enough and you want me back, I’ll come back. That was it.”
He joined Peterborough the next season and led them to promotion to National Two North.
“I didn’t think I’d be a head coach,” he admits. “The thing is with us back home we don’t have that self-confidence. I came to this country with no English, you’ve got to learn on your own, you’ve got to try anything, to look after yourself. And when that opportunity came to be a coach at Peterborough, it was nerve wracking.
“It’s built my confidence though, standing up front and talking in front of many players all the time. And to be honest, I feel good, I’ve done something that I never thought I’d do, it’s a learning curve for me, but I’m glad I made the decision to try it.”
Working on a limited budget has proven far from easy, as the club went straight back down the following season, and he’s now rebuilding once more. “Last season was a tough one for me,” he admits. “Winning is easy, but when you’re losing a game every week it’s quite stressful to be honest, it will make you stronger though.
“I take things more personally,” he says. “My missus was says I was always angry last season, I’d sit here all weekend just quiet, I couldn’t take the losing.
“A few times I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to quit’, but I’ve got family.”
That family, at least the older ones, are starting to cut their own path in the sport. The eldest, Suva, has signed for Cornish Pirates, who have converted him from a centre to a hooker.
Third eldest Ricky, another centre – at least for now – is at Wasps. “He’s a centre, bigger than all of them, he was playing under-18 for Wasps at fifteen, if he keeps growing, he’ll go a long way.”
The third, 19-year-old Samson is at Northampton Saints. “He’s got a kidney problem, it’s been tough for the whole family,” explains Vili. “They found out before he left to go Argentina for a tournament, his kidney function was only 20 per cent.
“He had to leave the tour to go and have a kidney op. He’s still healthy, he’s still training every day, but we are going through the process to have a kidney transplant. The next step is finding a donor, but we’re quite positive he’s going to get back to playing.
“He played five first team games last year as a 19-year-old, so he’s going in the right direction, but you’re always going to have that little bump in life, and you just have to deal with it. I’m glad he’s found out now because it could have been worse, but hopefully he’ll get the transplant soon and then he can get on with it. The doctors think it’ll be fine to continue playing rugby, that’s the positive side. But he’s only signed for a year with Saints, so hopefully they’ll give him the opportunity to return.”
All his kids are proud of their Tongan heritage, but also, like Vili, they support both England and Tonga. “I support England at sports, I’m Tongan-English.”
Would he ever go back to Tonga? “I would love to go back home, I’m always thinking about it, all the time,” he says. “The thing is, you come here you appreciate more what you’ve got back home. And what you’ve got back home, is more expensive here.
“You live two minutes from a beach in Tonga, but never go; you live in the sun every day, and here you’re always cold. You have organic fruit on your doorstep, and here it is very expensive. You come here and do appreciate what you have in Tonga.
“But don’t get me wrong, I love it here, this is my second home. I’m so grateful England gave me the opportunity, I’d like to go back home, but I don’t see it happening soon and I’m happy where I am now because my family is here.”
Making a career from rugby, especially in the Championship, has not always been easy. Did he ever worry about money? “Ooh, good question,” he says. “Loads of times. But you don’t have to be shy about it, you just but have to work a bit harder, and get on with it. It’s part of the journey for anyone.
“Probably the highest point in my career is to raise a rugby team,” he laughs. “I’ve been able to feed them, put food on the table, and moving is tough as a big family, but you have to.
“The main thing is we have a roof over our head, and food every day, and we love eating. I’m where my family is, so I’m alright – that gives me a smile every day.”
Story by Alex Mead
Pictures by Oli Hillyer-Riley
This extract was taken from issue 8 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.
Ampthill RUFC have set up a donation page for the Tonga Tsunami Relief Fund.