LONG READ 'It was tough but I had to do it': Sione Va'enuku's journey from Sydney 'garbo man' to the Saracens wolfpack

In his first two matches of Prem rugby, Sione Va’enuku has been box-office. A try on his league debut for Saracens against Sale. An early assist for Noah Caluori in the dismantling of Bristol on Saturday. Performances laced with rib-cracking punch in defence and flourishes of class with the ball.

The zeal should surprise nobody. Va’enuku was obsessed with union and league as a kid growing up in Australia’s Central Coast. Aged 14, he was barred from an age-grade selection after amassing too many yellow cards for high tackles. There were weekends he’d play four matches across the two rugby codes. For all the pointless noise around Brendan Venter’s job title, passion and aggression are two qualities which appeal hugely to the Saracens’ returning supremo.

Va’enuku is all too aware of the magnitude of his opportunity and utterly determined to seize it. Little wonder. Last season, he was playing for Ampthill in the Champ. Before that, an unsuccessful trial with Northampton Saints having paid his way from Australia to the East Midlands, then paid for his UK visa to stay in England. As recently as six years ago, he was hustling on a brutal hamster wheel; emptying rubbish bins on the streets of Sydney in the small hours, then training with the Roosters to stoke his dreams of playing in the NRL.

“I was never great at school; I just wanted to play footie,” Va’enuku says. “There’d be times I’d be going to work, playing union on the Saturday, thirds, seconds and firsts, then league on a Sunday. All I cared about was playing footie.

“If I wasn’t going to stay in school, I needed to get a job. I was a ‘scaffy’ [scaffolding worker] at 16, I was going into a carpentry apprenticeship but I had to stop that when I moved into one of the Roosters’ houses. Then I was a ‘garbo man’ from 17 to 20.

“It was hard but it was what I had to do. There was no other option for me. I either had to commit to playing rugby and working or not play rugby and work. It was tough getting home at 9pm to then get up at 3.30am to go to work, but I couldn’t just not go to work or not go to training.”

Va’enuku need not look far for role models. His father, Unuoi, is a stout Tongan who played at the 1995 World Cup straight out of school. Unuoi had not long turned 19 and wound up playing centre opposite the late Scott Hastings in a pool match against Scotland.

My dad was one of the youngest ever to play for Tonga at the 1995 World Cup. After that he got signed by Penrith Panthers on a training trial, but he got quite homesick and ran away from that environment.

“My old man still works two jobs now,” Va’enuku says. “He makes emergency fire doors and works security on Friday and Saturday nights.

“He was one of the youngest ever to play for Tonga in 1995. After that he got signed by Penrith Panthers on a training trial, but he got quite homesick and ran away from that environment and ended up with some more Tongans in Manly. He was staying in this granny flat with Wycliff Palu down in Dee Why.”

Life in an elite rugby environment was too much for the teenage Unuoi, but his name and his feats still command respect. Va’enuku has been supported in England by his friends Keni Fisilau, father of Greg, and Viliame Ma’asi, dad to Sale centre Rekeiti Ma’asi-White. Va’enuku spends Christmas with the Fisilaus and counts them as extended family.

“Everyone knows my dad or knows who he is. I think without those lads, Greg and ‘Rekeis’, who send me a text whenever they have time to just check in, I probably would have gone home.”

Another old comrade, Salesi Ma’afu, put Va’enuku up when he came to Northampton in September 2024. He was 24 years old but not well travelled. There were shades of Unuoi’s own experiences in how Va’enuku, who is English-qualified through his mother Kate’s family, came to be with the Prem heavyweights, and the emotions that hobbled him when he landed. He’d played one NRL pre-season game for the Roosters but struggled to break into their core squad. He went back to union, and almost immediately, was parachuted into a squad of internationals. When he fetched up at Saints, he toiled to feel a sense of belonging, almost as if he hadn’t earned his place among such exalted company.

 

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“I was playing a trial game for my local rugby union team, and this agent, Steff Collins, was playing in that game. He came down, met my parents and said he would try and get me over to the UK. We went through those meetings, had a Zoom call with Sam Vesty and Phil Dowson, and they said they were happy to get me over.

“When I got there, I sort of didn’t put all my eggs in the basket. I didn’t try as hard as I should have. There was a bit of self-sabotage. There were nerves. I was homesick. It was the first time I had properly been away from my family. I didn’t have the Fisilaus or Ma’asi-Whites to help me in the right direction. And I also thought I didn’t deserve to be there. It felt too good to be true. I’ve gone from playing fifth grade local rugby union to three months later, rubbing shoulders with lads like Fin Smith and Rory Hutchinson.

“Them letting me go made me realise how much I actually wanted it. I was this close to being with them.”

The next few months were fraught. Some advised Va’enuku to go back to Australia. He felt differently. Even if staying in England meant swallowing much of his life savings.

I actually broke my face in the first pre-season game the next year. I snapped my cheekbone in three places so I missed nine or 10 games.

“I really wanted to stay. It was midway through the Champ season already, I was just fortunate Ampthill said they would bring me in and give me a go. I had some savings put from when I was a garbo man put away and I used that to pay for my visa. That was $14,000 AUD (around £7,000) and I had to go home first to sort all of that out.

“I went back on the Friday, Ampthill played Ealing on the Saturday and I went to watch. They got touched up 92-0 and I was sitting thinking ‘I’m in for a long year here’.”

Ampthill, nicknamed ‘The Mob’, are a rustic old outfit; a ‘proper rugby club’. The Mob gave Va’enuku two things: a sense of community, and a chance to showcase himself.

“That club is a massive family. You are going into battle, struggling to go to training at 6.30 in the freezing cold, no-one is better than anyone, we are all here fighting it out on the same mud pitches. I didn’t have much money to book flights home at the end of the year and they put in my contract those would be paid for.”

Va’enuku’s first season at Dillingham Park was a grind. The English game and English weather were different. The levels were ratcheted higher when Ampthill met top-flight opposition in the Prem Cup.

 

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“I didn’t have my best year. My first game was against Bath and I was getting run over, all of the boys were smashing me. I grew into it. I was playing wing most of the season which was a struggle.

“A couple of lads made it easier – Tino Mapapalagi, who is also Tongan, and James Johnston, who played for Samoa. They are older heads who have played in the Prem or in France, and played for their countries. They just said ‘stick it out mate, all it takes is a few games to string together and you don’t know where you could be’.”

Where Va’enuku landed first was in a hospital, being x-rayed.

“I actually broke my face in the first pre-season game the next year. I snapped my cheekbone in three places so I missed nine or 10 games. It was time for me not to play rugby or think about it. I had gone back home that year and was still playing league and union in between our Champ seasons, so I needed that time off.

“Having that injury break and coming back in, I had more of an idea what the Champ was and what the team needed from me.”

I got cleaned up for the first time in my life. The number eight, Jacques Vermeulen, lit me up off one of the lineouts and I had the shivers through my body. I’ve never been hit like that.

Ten tries in 20 Champ games later, Va’enuku was Ampthill’s player of the year. And then he was a Saracen. Players he’d once idolised from the other side of the world – Jamie George, Owen Farrell, Elliot Daly – were now teammates.

“The coaching staff here made me feel wanted, and they wanted me to grow as a person as well,” he says.

The Mancunian opposition for Va’enuku’s Prem bow was laden with brutes. Playing in his favoured inside centre slot, Va’enuku finished a neat team try. His mother and younger brother, Tevita, who has moved to England with ambitious fourth-tier club Oundle, were in the crowd. Va’enuku had arrived and he was motoring. Then he got whacked by a South African sledgehammer.

“I got cleaned up for the first time in my life. The number eight, Jacques Vermeulen, lit me up off one of the lineouts and I had the shivers through my body. I’ve never been hit like that.

“That was a good experience for me as well. I was quite nervous. It was good to have my mum and brother there.”

 

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In the background, with the World Cup under a year from now, international conversations are already bubbling away. Tonga have made their interest known and would allow Va’enuku to follow in his father’s trailblazing bootprints. He is also eligible for Australia and England, should his game develop sufficiently to move either setup. It feels a long way off, after just two matches, but Va’enuku has the skillset and the mindset to turn influential heads.

“I have had a chat with the Tongan coach. I just said to him at the moment I want to worry about the next year and not think about too much. But I also said there was an opportunity to go through the England pathway, like England A, and I would take that with both hands. I ain’t putting a rush on anything, I’m just making sure I am playing week in, week out.”

From scaffy to garbo man, aspiring Rooster to a fanged member of the Saracens wolfpack, Va’enuku has a habit of makings things happen.