Back in the early 2000s a small band of UK-based Tongan international rugby players used to hold regular community gatherings to share improbably huge meals, pray and socialise together. Fe’ao Vunipola, Kuli Faletau and Keni Fisilau were all from the same club at home and, over the years, their respective wives and children in effect became one big extended family.
To say the national teams of England and Wales, along with the British & Irish Lions, have derived some benefit from this bulging houseful of expat Tongan muscle would be the most colossal of understatements. Between them Fe’ao’s sons Mako and Billy Vunipola earned 154 caps for England while Kuli’s boy, Taulupe Faletau, has played 104 times for Wales. Now it is time to meet the Fisilaus in the shape of Keni’s 20-year-old son Greg, the back-row who features for Exeter against Bath in the Champions Cup last-16 on Saturday and made his England A debut in February.
