Daily Telegraph
Malakai Fekitoa exclusive interview: Hunting wild pigs, climbing palm trees, a devastating childhood accident... and key to Wasps revival
Since joining Wasps from Toulon, Tongan-born All Black Fekitoa has reinvented himself from a hot-stepping centre into a defensive general
By
Daniel Schofield,
Here are some things you may not know about Malakai Fekitoa: he can climb a coconut tree in 15 seconds, he is a dab hand at spearfishing and hunting wild pigs and he was forbidden from playing rugby by his parents after a devastating childhood accident nearly paralysed him.
What you probably do know about Fekitoa, if you have been following the Gallagher Premiership this season, is that the Wasps centre is the most destructive tackler in the league. Exeter wing Tom Wyatt discovered this point last weekend. No sooner had Wyatt received the ball than he was enveloped by Fekitoa, lifted up and driven two metres backwards, with Exeter duly conceding a penalty. For those who claim the “game has gone soft”, this was the perfect demonstration of how to hit hard and legally.
On Saturday, Fekitoa is set to face the ultimate test of his defensive abilities in his head to head with Bristol Bears’ Semi Radradra in the first of the Premiership semi-finals - immovable object, meet irresistible force. As former Toulon teammates, Fekitoa knows exactly how difficult it is to face Radradra. Go high and you risk being handed off. Go low and you leave yourself vulnerable to the offload.
“To be honest, I have no clue how to stop him,” Fekitoa told The Daily Telegraph. “He is one of the best players in the world and Bristol are very lucky to have him. I don’t have a plan. I think a lot of defence comes down to heart. Our defence coach Ian Costello tells us it comes down to you whether you really want to make that tackle and understand who you are making it for: yourself and your teammates. If he is my man then I have to take him down.”
Since joining Wasps from Toulon last summer, Fekitoa has reinvented himself from a hot-stepping, hard-running centre into a defensive general who provides a hard edge to a team overflowing with playmakers and broken-field runners. In the absence of a crowd, his big hits generate an atmosphere all of their own among his teammates and support staff.
“I don’t really go out to look to put those shots in,” Fekitoa said. “Within our system we are very aggressive. It is just timing. If you time it right then it flows. We talk a lot about creating our own atmosphere without fans and providing those momentum shifts. Boys get up when things like this happen. I may not talk a lot with the boys but I feel I lead by example. I feel if I put a marker down then the boys will follow. It is all about changing momentum. That’s really key, especially in big games.”
While there will be no fans in the Ricoh Arena on Saturday, Wasps will be supported by Fekitoa’s family in the village of Faleoa on the Tongan island of Ha’apai. Growing up as one of 14 children, Fekitoa had little in the way of luxuries. They all slept on mats on the floor while the siblings shared a few pairs of shoes and were expected to pitch in on the family from an early age.
“My dad travelled for work and supported us through school and for shoes but not all of us had shoes,” Fekitoa said. “You didn’t really need them on a small island. You don’t go out for coffee. You grow on your own food. I think it was one of the best childhoods. I still did schooling but most of it was self taught living whether it was swimming, climbing trees and playing rugby.”
This idyllic vision of hunting wild pigs and catching fish with spears - Fekitoa became expert at both - was sharply punctured when he was six. Playing besides a church, an enormous wooden door collapsed on top of him, crushing his left hip. With few medical facilities on the island, Fekitoa was treated by traditional Tongan methods of herbal remedies and brute force over the course of eight agonising months. “I still remember the pain,” Fekitoa said. “The Tongan way of making it better is to apply more pain by adjusting your leg by pulling it out to straighten it out. Those are really vivid memories. It worked but you have to go through a lot of pain. It almost makes me cry to go back to that place.”
Even when he returned home, Fekitoa walked with a limp and was teased by other children as a “cripple”. As a result, his parents told him not to play rugby, a ban that lasted until Fekitoa went to high school on a different island. Of course, he started playing again but his secret came out when his parents heard radio reports of his exploits. “My mum was mad,” Fekitoa said. “She told me that there was no future in rugby and I needed to concentrate on my studies.”
Instead he won a rugby scholarship to Wesley College, the alma mater of Jonah Lomu in New Zealand, where he met Charles Piutau, another of Saturday’s likely opponents. Fekitoa arrived not speaking any English and so Piutau, a second-generation Tongan, took him under his wing.
Together their careers took off and just months after qualifying on residency Fekitoa made his All Blacks debut in the 2014 series against England. “I think it has been the happiest I have seen my family,” Fekitoa said. “It was also important to show the people back home that it was achievable. If you work hard at something you can achieve your dream. That’s the message I hoped I put out there.”
Fekitoa was part of the All Blacks squad that won the 2015 World Cup but he failed to truly nail down his place after the retirements of midfield totems Ma’a Nonu and Conrad Smith. So, in 2017, he signed for Toulon. The conventional narrative was that Fekitoa turned his back on New Zealand for the money, but his actions were the very opposite of selfishness.
“I realised my career would only represent a small part of my life,” Fekitoa said. “In my family, there are no savings or house to sell. I realised I had to look after my family. This was hard on my career that I had to sacrifice that dream to look after my family. That’s the thing people don’t get. It is easy for people to say he’s moving for the money like it is for me. It is for my family and that’s a lot of people.”
New Zealand’s loss has been Wasps’ considerable gain. Head coach Lee Blackett says that he is pivotal to the way Wasps play in both attack and defence, and Fekitoa himself feels he is a far better player now than when he was in an All Blacks shirt. “I understand a lot more things about rugby than when I was playing for the All Blacks,” Fekitoa said. “I knew I had more to give. My legacy is not complete.”
That starts on Saturday with the Bristol semi-final. Despite reaching the Premiership final in 2017, there is only a smattering of big-game experience in a relatively callow Wasps side. Much of that resides with Fekitoa, which is a responsibility he embraces. “I like to walk towards pressure,” Fekitoa said. “That’s why we play the game, to have that feeling of achieving something special.”
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