Samu Kerevi restoring pride in the family name through Australia form

In a parallel universe, Samu Kerevi could be a mainstay of the All Blacks midfield. When he was seven years old he was forced to flee a coup in the Solomon Islands and boarded a cargo plane bound for New Zealand. As fate would have it, however, the flight was diverted to Australia and though Kerevi could not speak a word of English he was provided with clothes by the Salvation Army and granted asylum to forge a life in Brisbane, where the Wallabies host Eddie Jones’s side in the second Test on Saturday.

If that sounds like a sliding-doors moment then Kerevi has had a few of them. He moved to the Solomon Islands because his grandfather – Kerevi was raised by his grandparents – was stationed there for his job with the Commonwealth. The 28-year-old had left Fiji to be with his grandfather as a young child – in part because he was born out of wedlock, and in part because his parents could not afford to raise him and his two brothers, Josua and Jone.

It was also to escape a life of crime because back then the Kerevi name was notorious for all the wrong reasons. He talks of bank robberies, assaults and “a lot of criminal activity” that his cousins and uncles were mixed up in. “Like things out of a movie,” says Kerevi, whose cousin is about to finish a 14-year jail sentence and whose uncles have been imprisoned for more than 15 years. It was a fate awaiting Kerevi until he moved away and now it is a motivation to restore pride in the family name with performances for the Wallabies such as that which earned him the award for man of the match in the 30-28 victory in the first Test last Saturday.

“I had a pretty tough upbringing,” says Kerevi. “My mum had us pre-wedlock, pretty young, around 19-20. It was a pretty difficult