spinofflive
Joeli Vidiri salutes the Eden Park crowd after scoring four tries in a Super 12 match against the Bulls (Photo: Phil Walter/Getty Images)
Joeli Vidiri salutes the Eden Park crowd after scoring four tries in a Super 12 match against the Bulls (Photo: Phil Walter/Getty Images)

SportsJuly 29, 2020

Joeli Vidiri was as good as you remember

Joeli Vidiri salutes the Eden Park crowd after scoring four tries in a Super 12 match against the Bulls (Photo: Phil Walter/Getty Images)
Joeli Vidiri salutes the Eden Park crowd after scoring four tries in a Super 12 match against the Bulls (Photo: Phil Walter/Getty Images)

In the Counties-Manukau and Auckland Blues teams of the late 1990s, ‘Big Joe’ was one half of a double act the likes of which we may never see again.

Only a handful of players, maybe fewer, could ever claim to have equal billing in a match featuring Jonah Lomu – but Joeli Vidiri was one of them.

The Tongan kid who changed rugby forever, and the Fijian bloke who scored tries for fun: for a few years in the late 1990s, the Jonah and Joe show was the hottest ticket in New Zealand rugby. Stephen Donald used to sit on the grass bank at Pukekohe Stadium and watch that show every chance he got. So did Kieran Read. At a time when the National Provincial Championship still got the blood boiling and the crowds on their feet, the two wingers were the headline act.

Even in death one of them remains a headline act, while the other, still very much living, sadly feels like a footnote, which is much less than he deserves. Not that he would complain. To be in the presence of Joeli Vidiri today is to feel shrouded in an otherworldly grace – a grace comprised entirely of contentment and humility. With just a smile, he can make the world feel better. He flashes that smile often, and at everyone. He flashes it six days a week at Mitre 10 Mega in Pukekohe.

Pukekohe in the middle of winter, 1994, when Colin Lawrie Fields were mostly ankle deep mud and a cold rain fell under yellow lights at Tuesday and Thursday training. This was Joeli’s landing place, a world away from the sultry Fijian heat and the rich red Melanesian dirt. It was rugby that brought him here or, more accurately, the rugby club. He was 21 then, weighing in at 100 kilograms and standing just shy of six foot five. Over the next six seasons, hundreds of players would confront those statistics, and lose.

If Jonah was the ever-present danger, Joeli was the unknown quantity. That’s not to say his extraordinary set of skills had somehow flown under the radar, it’s just that with Joeli you could never quite pick where he was going to be. One moment he would be hovering in back play, the next he was hitting the line at full pace. Not many people got a hand to him in those situations. He played as if he saw the future.

He wanted his future to be with the All Blacks, but his devastating form for Counties and the Blues through the first two years of rugby’s professional era in 1996 and 1997 went unrewarded. He had already represented Fiji and therefore had to wait out a mandatory three-year eligibility stand-down. There is no doubt – at least there should not be – that were it not for IRB regulations, he would have been an All Blacks star in those two years. In 1998 he won Commonwealth Games gold in Kuala Lumpur with the New Zealand Sevens team, and that same year he made his All Blacks debut, replacing Jonah Lomu in a test against England, scoring a try.

Jonah Lomu and Joeli Vidiri following the announcement of the 1998 All Blacks squad (Photo: Ross Setford/EMPICS via Getty Images)

Scoring tries was his stock in trade. In his 61 appearances for the Blues he scored 43 of them. For Counties the record was even better (71 appearances, 56 tries). His hat-trick against Waikato in the 1997 NPC semifinal stands as one of the great performances in provincial history. That’s saying something, considering he scored four against Canterbury in the semifinal a year earlier.

It’s hard to say for how long Joeli Vidiri had been suffering from the kidney disease that would prematurely end his career in 2001. Instead, struggling to maintain his fitness levels, he suffered from the usual stereotypes of the time. As Sir John Kirwan notes in the Scratched episode embedded above, it was easier for people to put his lack of conditioning down to laziness. There is an implication inherent in that statement, one that reflects a time when wingers like Joeli Vidiri, Marika Vunibaka and Paula Bale were considered, in the New Zealand context at least, “flavour players”.

As it was, Vidiri played just twice for the All Blacks. Australia claimed victory in his final outing, doubt claimed victory over his future selection, kidney disease claimed victory over his playing career. Dialysis would leave his arms disfigured, but keep him alive. Family faith would prevent him from going through with his first chance at a transplant. His mother’s concerns proved too much for her devoted son to deal with. It would be many years later before another donor was found.

Joeli Vidiri at home in Pukekohe (Photo: Scratched)

Today he is still a giant. He moves with the same grace, a silent stealth. It’s not the threatening kind it was on the park. You can feel his warmth approach before you turn to see the smile. He is heavier, older, wiser, but no richer. It seems not to matter to Joeli. As far as the locals are concerned he will always be revered in Pukekohe.

And as long as the yellow lights illuminate the cold winter rain on Colin Lawrie Fields, you’ll find Big Joe somewhere around the club. There will be a moment when his eye catches an old photo of himself, and for the briefest of moments you’ll see what might have been flash across his face.

And then, it’s gone.

Watch the Joeli Vidiri episode, and all other episodes of Scratched: Aotearoa’s Lost Sporting Legends, here. Made with the support of NZ On Air.

Joeli Vidiri (left image by Ross Land, right image by Stu Forster)
Joeli Vidiri (left image by Ross Land, right image by Stu Forster)

SportsJuly 27, 2020

Scratched: Joeli Vidiri, the greatest All Black that never was

Joeli Vidiri (left image by Ross Land, right image by Stu Forster)
Joeli Vidiri (left image by Ross Land, right image by Stu Forster)

From tennis champions to dance craze inventors, Scratched celebrates New Zealand sporting heroes who never got their due – but whose legacies deserve to be in lights. This month, Joeli Vidiri, the greatest All Black that never was.

Watch this episode on TVNZ On Demand.

Most customers at Mitre 10 Mega in Pukekohe don’t realise they’ve just been greeted by one of the most exciting talents in New Zealand’s rugby history. At 1.90m tall and with spades for hands, Joeli Vidiri certainly looks like he could hold his own on a rugby field. But in 1996, he wasn’t just holding his own. He was dominating Super 12 rugby on his way to a Player of the Year title and championship with the Auckland Blues.

At only 22, Vidiri was sought after by both the All Blacks and his birth country of Fiji. Owing to international rules, Vidiri would be unable to play for the All Blacks until 1998 because he had played for Fiji in 1995 and had to wait three years before representing another country.

By 1998, Vidiri was slowing down. He played two tests as an All Black reserve but his explosiveness and speed had greatly dimmed in just two years. He never played for the All Blacks again.

Joeli Vidiri retired from all rugby in 2001 after beginning dialysis to treat kidney disease. He was 27. These days, Vidiri works six days a week at Mitre 10 Mega Pukekohe with two healthy kidneys after a successful transplant in 2015.

Next time you’re looking for a new screwdriver in Pukekohe, keep an eye out. You might find a rugby legend instead.

Watch Scratched episode 1: Ruia Morrison, the first Māori tennis player to compete at Wimbledon. 

Watch Scratched episode 2: Anne Audain, the the winningest road runner in history.

Watch Scratched episode 3: Brett Fairweather, the creator of Jump Jam.

Watch Scratched episode 4: Chunli Li, undefeated in New Zealand at 57-years-old

Watch Scratched episode 5: Barbara Cox, the matriarch of New Zealand football

Watch Scratched episode 6: Māori tennis star Ruia Morrison meets Serena Williams

Scratched: Aotearoa’s Lost Sporting Legends is made with the support of NZ On Air.