When Dan Carter took centre stage at the glittering BBC Spoty awards as he plays out his rugby career in Europe in well-remunerated Top 14 splendour, one of the southern hemisphere’s lesser-known international stalwarts was picking his way along a more intriguing and less glamorous path.
A little over two months ago a global audience watched Aleki Lutui scrum down for Tonga in his third Rugby World Cup. Last weekend, as Carter headed to Belfast to pick up an award for overseas sports personality of the year fresh from Racing 92’s match in Northampton, Lutui was celebrating a home win for Ampthill in the largely amateur third tier of the English league.
Aged 37 and with a distinguished club history spanning both hemispheres behind him, Lutui’s playing career, like that of Carter and a number of other All Blacks who have joined the Top 14 such as Ma’a Nonu and Conrad Smith, is in wind-down mode. While his World Cup-winning counterparts top up their pensions among the good and the great in the world’s most lucrative league, the muscle-bound Tongan hooker has probably forgotten far more about rugby than many of those benefiting from his years of international experience at a small but growing club in Bedfordshire will ever know.
While winning his 37 caps for Tonga, with a few more for the combined Pacific islanders for good measure, Lutui cut his professional teeth with Bay of Plenty in New Zealand’s top flight while also lining up for the Chiefs in the southern hemisphere’s pre-eminent Super 14. In 2006 he travelled across the world to join Premiership side Worcester, making 181 appearances over six years, before short spells at Edinburgh and Gloucester led him to an unlikely destination between Luton and Bedford, where he plays as a semi-professional in National League One.
The sporting and social hub of a small town of about 8,000 people, the club seems an odd rugby-playing beat for a former policeman from the island of Tofua, even if he is one of a quartet of Tongan internationals, past and present, who have set up their own little enclave in the locale.
“We work on the basis that we get guys towards the end of their career,” explains the club’s director of rugby, Mark Lavery. “Viliami Ma’asi came and changed everything, then his mate Maama Molitika came … so we had two of them. Then their mate Paino Hehea says to them: ‘Tell me about Ampthill’, so he comes as well, this 6ft 6in and 20st guy who played for Racing in France. So Paino’s arrived and Aleki wouldn’t have considered it without the other three being here, so it’s worked it out well. They’re wonderful people: very honest, very professional, very diligent. They’re good trainers and they set a wonderful example for everyone else at our level.”
Lutui is the club’s only current international, having received a surprise call-up for Tonga who did themselves little justice in the World Cup, winning only one pool game, against Namibia, and being beaten by Georgia, Argentina and New Zealand. While there was no shame in a side as poorly resourced as the second-tier Pacific islanders losing to teams from the Rugby Championship, defeat at the hands of Georgia in their opening match was one they did not see coming.
“We were very disappointed with how the World Cup went,” Lutui says. “You know, financially we struggle. We don’t have enough games because we only play three or four times a year. That’s a real problem. If we played as much as the All Blacks or Australia or England we’d be much better. And if we could play against teams like that more often then our players would benefit because they would be better able to compete and win Test rugby matches. When we come up against a team like the All Blacks in the World Cup we can’t cope. Tonga needs more games against good Test opposition so that we can get used to playing them and learn how to cope with them.”
On semi-professional contracts in a team featuring several young loanees from Premiership clubs, Ampthill’s Tongan contingent are also forced to work at “proper jobs” to top up their income, which means the club’s head coach, Paul Turner, has only two evenings a week in which to drill his squad. Capped at fly-half for Wales and a former coach of Sale, Saracens, Gloucester, Harlequins and Newport Gwent Dragons, Turner finds the experience of his Tongans invaluable in the limited time he has with his players.
“They’re great guys, the islander boys,” he says. “They’re very passionate about their rugby. They’re warriors at the end of the day. They bring huge respect and real good values to our game situations and our training. We’ve got a lot of talented youngsters and they can only reap the benefits of being in their company. It also gives the boys an opportunity to carry on with their playing careers and we can help them with their coaching careers.”
For his part, Lutui admits he is happy just to continue playing, having first caught Turner’s eye with what the Welshman describes as “an outstanding performance” during the opening match of the 2005 Lions Tour when Lawrence Dallaglio suffered a broken ankle against Bay of Plenty. Attempts to sign Lutui for the Dragons came to naught as the player had yet to be capped by Tonga and could not get a work permit. He eventually signed for Worcester and now holds a British passport. Having secured seven promotions in 10 years to find themselves among the top 40 rugby clubs in England, Ampthill are happy to reap the benefits of having a player who, despite spending 10 years in the front row at the highest level of club rugby, wears the rigours of his brutal trade remarkably well. With no noticeable reminders of a bruising life to be seen on his face, it is only his intimidating physique that gives any indication of an adult life spent in the scrum.
“Well, from being a professional rugby player I just learned how to look after myself,” he says. “It’s a mental thing and a physical thing. It’s all down to how you manage your body week in and week out. Recovery is very important … nutrition … everything. Whatever your level, you train hard, you recover well and you just make sure your body is going to be ready for the weekend.”
As he troops out into the pouring rain of a dark night to prepare for the latest match of a long career, his director of rugby ponders the likelihood of Lutui and his compatriots staying in their surroundings a long way from home. “I hope they do hang around,” Lavery says. “You know, the world’s getting smaller and we’ve got four Tongan Test players, which is a huge draw for anyone, be they a kid or an adult, within 20 miles who wants to play rugby. Look at it this way: where around here is anyone going to learn more than from those boys?”
