Ex-Wallaby Top 14 winger set to return to rugby league

Former Wallaby winger Suliasi Vunivalu, who has been released by La Rochelle, is poised to switch back to rugby league and has been lined up for a move to Super League outfit Hull.

Vunivalu, 30, scored two tries in four games before the Champions Cup defeat 42-21 to the Stormers in December, when he ruptured his ACL and Ronan O’Gara called time on his stay on France’s Atlantic coast.

Les Maritimes never saw the best of the Fijian-born star after injuries restricted him to just two appearances in the 2024-2025 campaign, following his move from Queensland Reds, where he touched down 16 times in 39 games.

Vunivalu scored 86 tries in 111 NRL games with the Melbourne Storm, where he won Grand Finals in 2016, 2018, and 2020, while also being capped 10 times by Fiji’s RL team, Fiji Bati.

With the Wallabies, Vunivalu scored two tries in seven test appearances between 2022-23, having been sin-binned in two of his first three caps. He was granted an early release from his Rugby Australia contract in November 2024 to move to France.

The 6’4, 102kg wing, who played centre earlier in his career, is expected to be fit for the start of the 2027 Super League season and has been linked with a number of clubs, including Wakefield Trinity, who pulled out of the running to sign him at the end of last week.

He is well known to the Airlie Birds’ incoming head coach, Steve McNamara, and was given a guided tour of Hull’s facilities last week, with talks now at an advanced stage for him to switch back codes for the first time in six years.

It’s understandable why Hull are keen to sign him, because, as a rugby union player, only 50% of his salary would count on the £2.1 million salary cap next year, rising to 75% in year two.