TONGAN THAW

TANIELA TUPOU aka Tongan Thor was a schoolboy sensation who looked untouchable for Australia... until he wasn't

- JOSH GRAHAM

However, the rampaging No 8 - as he was then - didn't speak any English, so he wasn't keen on the move. With the promise of a better life, his mother and brother convinced him to accept the scholarship and off he went.

Before long, Tupou - who was originally nicknamed 'The Rhino' by kids at school before the moniker 'The Tongan Thor' stuck - was scoring sensational tries on live-streamed games with a bumper highlights reel that caught the attention of the rugby world.

He played at 138kg as a schoolboy and showed a great turn of pace for a big man. He was often simply unstoppable.

While he got his big break in New Zealand, Tupou had always dreamed of making it to Australia, even getting up at 2am to watch the plane bound for the country leave the airport in Tonga.

With his brother in Queensland, Tupou was keen to follow and the deal for him to join Super Rugby's Reds was sealed over a Big Mac in McDonald's in Māngere with general manager Sam Cordingley.

Tupou didn't realise he'd have to work his way through the ranks at the Reds before he was thrown into the Super Rugby cauldron, but by the time he got his shot in 2016, he didn’t let it slip. After just three games, Michael Cheika was on the phone calling him up for the Wallabies, Tupou having qualified for Australia on residency.

Since then he has been synonymous with this era of the Wallabies, largely an automatic pick. However, a difficult year in Sydney with the Waratahs after his former side Melbourne Rebels hit the wall left Tupou questioning whether he'd forgotten how to play. He slipped behind Allan Alaalatoa and Tom Robertson in the pecking order at tighthead and when we first caught up with him down under during the Lions tour, it looked like he would miss out on the chance to even have a crack at Andy Farrell's Test-match team.