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'Earn my stripes': Lote Tuqiri's cousin ready to forge his own legacy

Photo credit: supplied by Fijian Drua/Kara Tavi

Fijian Drua prop Emosi Tuqiri will follow in the footsteps of giants this weekend when he makes his Super Rugby debut against Moana Pasifika in Auckland.

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Named to start at loosehead prop for Saturday’s crunch clash at Mt Smart Stadium, the 22-year-old is preparing to add to the legacy forged by his world-class relatives.

Tuqiri is related to former Wallabies stars Tevita and Kirisi Kuridrandi, Waratahs winger Nemani Nadolo, and dual-international Lote Tuqiri.

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While there’s plenty of excitement and anticipation ahead of his debut, there’s also no shying away from the pressure of doing the “family name proud.”

But Tuqiri isn’t feeling the heat. He’s ready.

In the week leading up to his Super Rugby debut, Tuqiri told RugbyPass that he’s eager to “make a name for myself.”

“It’s almost a blessing in disguise where it’s pressure but you can learn from what they’ve done and their mistakes,” Tuqiri said.

“It doesn’t mean that I’m not going to make mistakes myself but I’m probably just aware not to have made as many.

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“They’ve been a massive part of the journey in dealing with that pressure.

“For me, it’s not so much the pressure, rugby has always been something that has been in the family and I’ve loved so I focus more on the fun and just enjoying it.

“I’ve even spoken to Lote too. He’s obviously been my idol growing up as a kid.

“He’s taught me a lot and he’s done our family name proud and full respect to everything he’s done. He’s done almost everything you can do in both codes.

“He said it’s my turn now to continue that legacy but not even just the last name (but) to make a name for myself… earn my stripes.”

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Heralded as a schoolboy sensation at Brisbane’s Marist College, with his highlight reel surpassing 93,000 views on YouTube, Tuqiri was always destined for greatness.

Tuqiri really could do it all, and was the chosen goal kicker for his club team growing up – a goal kicking prop.

Clearly, the rising star had potential – it was just up to him to make the most of it.

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But as the adage goes, hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard, and Tuqiri almost learnt that the hard way.

Coming out of school, the Marist First XV captain was “quite overweight.” Tuqiri lost 20-kilos while rugby league, and was called up to the URC to play for the Australian Barbarians shortly after.

From there, his hard work began to pay off as a domino of opportunities began to fall his way.

Eventually, Tuqiri received was given the chance to head south to Victoria where he plied his trade with the Melbourne Rebels.

However, disaster struck in each of his two preseasons with the Rebels, as he was sidelined for 15 weeks ahead of both campaigns with serious injuries.

But as Tuqiri said, “it was all meant to happen.”

“I believe in everything happens for a reason and my timing is not so much, it’s God’s timing,” he added.

“Thinking back now it’s like f*** what a journey it’s been, it’s been two years with back-to-back injuries, going to be making my debut this weekend for my home country.

“It’s almost full circle and pretty grateful.”

Fijian Drua have travelled to Auckland for their Super Rugby season opener against Moana Pasifikia in Auckland.

That match is set to get underway at 4:35pm NZT at Mt Smart Stadium.

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J
JW 26 minutes ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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