Phil Gifford: Remembering the endlessly positive Va'aiga Tuigamala

Va'aiga Tuigamala at a tribute to former All Blacks coach Sir Graham Henry in 2012. Photo / Photosport.co.nz

To meet Va'aiga Tuigamala was basically to love him.

He was just 16 when he and his best mate Apollo Perelini, who would play for Manu Samoa at the 1991 World Cup and then have a stellar club league career in Britain, approached me after I'd spoken at Kelston Boys' High School.

They were both impeccably polite, and then Inga, somehow keeping a straight face, said, "Remember my name, because one day you'll be writing about me when I'm an All Black." Then he and Perelini collapsed into a convulsion of giggles.

It was the contrast between the self-deprecating man, and the fantastically physical rugby and league player that was so appealing about Tuigamala.

He was in the lounge at his family's West Auckland home when the 1989 All Black touring team was announced on television. It took the NZRU chairman three goes to say his name right. It was typical of Inga that he wasn't offended. He'd tell the story himself and swear that "by that time my brothers and sisters were screaming so loud it didn't matter".

He was the endlessly positive link between two great Polynesian icons of the game, Bryan Williams in the 1970s, and Jonah Lomu in the 1990s.

Tuigamala paved the way for the blockbusting Lomu. Inga was built like a prop, but he stepped and ran like a wing. He scored in his first test, at the 1991 World Cup against the United States, but it was in 1992, under coach Laurie Mains, that he became a first-choice All Black.

He played 19 tests, scoring five tries, but oddly enough his best football was possibly played for the Wigan league club where he moved to the centres, and the full range of his skills was exploited.

Proudly Samoan he returned to international rugby in 1996, for Manu Samoa, where he was captained at the 1999 World Cup by Pat Lam, now a professional coach at the Bristol Bears.

The two shared a special bond, and in 2009 Lam told me how a decade earlier Inga's Christianity had expressed itself with kindness, when they were both playing for the Newcastle rugby team in England.

"I was rooming with Inga, and he knew I was frustrated. We shared a devotional, and read Romans 12:2 that says, 'Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.'

"We talked through it, and at the end I thought I wasn't here to prove myself to anyone but the Big Fella, and He'd given me gifts, which I should use and enjoy. I went out, enjoyed myself, scored three tries, got player of the day, and I was thinking, 'Shucks, there's something about that'."

The last time I talked with Inga was on the phone in 2018, arranging for a crew from the television series "The Story of Rugby" to be assisted by him while they filmed in Samoa, where he was then living. Chatting with him was a lovely reminder that the sunny schoolkid was still a large part of the grown man.