Much like the Wallabies for the past 35 years at Eden Park, Rob Valetini was picked on by bigger, heavier-hitting brothers.
Those fun pick-up games, with moments of fierce edge, helped Valetini find his feet as a kid growing up with a rugby ball in AFL-mad Melbourne.
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You had to toughen up to survive when you had seven older brothers and two step-brothers all happy for you to stay at the bottom of the totem pole.
The stage is far grander but the script is not so different now the smash-tackling forward has been picked to face the All Blacks from No.8 on Saturday.
You know the game of “Bull Rush” that kids used to play with young bodies dashing from one boundary to another trying to avoid the “in” person in the middle who was attempting to tag or tackle as many as possible.
“We played a lot of Bull Rush. I was the youngest and my brothers were tough on me, called me the little whinger,” Valetini recalls with a broad grin.
“I was bullied in a good way. You toughen up and come to a point where you handle it and give it back.
“You don’t tell your parents. You sort that brother stuff out yourself.”
Valetini, 22, and the Wallabies find themselves in a similar scenario. They are the snotty-nosed trans-Tasman cousins with everything to prove against the black-jerseyed kings who have bullied them off Auckland’s Eden Park since 1986.
Valetini wasn’t being careless with words on Thursday when he brought up the “fight fire-with-fire" line which the All Blacks will see as a red rag.
Wallabies coach Davie Rennie has included Lachie Swinton and Matt Philip beside him in this remodelled pack for just that reason.
“We felt that certainly for 15 minutes we lost all the collisions. We have to get in their faces and I think this (pack) gives us more of an edge,” Rennie said.
That 15-minute lull early in the second half at Eden Park last weekend made a 17-0 avalanche of points to the All Blacks far too easy. Test over.
Last weekend was the first taste of the hostile Eden Park cauldron for Valetini and a crop of other young Wallabies like Tate McDermott, Noah Lolesio and Darcy Swain.
“We can’t wait 20 minutes into the game to start playing,” Valetini said of last weekend’s slow start.
Whatever part being Eden Park novices played in that, Valetini said he was relishing the chance to be back in the same full-house setting just seven days later.
“Just to experience it at Eden Park, play in front of their fans and know we can score tries is an advantage going into this next Test,” Valetini said.
“We dipped our toes in (last week). This time we have to take control, beat them to the punch.”
Valetini has had to learn his lessons so he can make 113kg of Fijian muscle count like keen judges have been predicting for years.
Being selected in training squads last year wasn’t making it. He had to learn to push harder at training, not just survive. He had to be more consistent.
Playing No.8 on Saturday means getting his hands on the ball more than in last weekend’s role at blindside flanker.
The Brumbies enforcer’s mentality in defence won’t change or those extra effort plays like his valuable charge-down in the first half last weekend.
“The opportunity to get in someone’s face and drive them backwards...there’s no better feeling,” Valetini said.
This is exactly where Valetini has always wanted to be. It’s where his father Manueli always wanted to be but was cruelly denied in Fiji.
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A potential Test debut for Fiji loomed for his father in the 1980s but his off-field record prevented it.
“We heard stories when we were younger of dad not being able to play. He was pretty close to making it but he’d been in trouble and he was stripped of it,” Valetini said.
“Dad has made lots of sacrifices to give my brothers and I the opportunity to live good lives. He’s also taught us about the values of being good men off the field and taking nothing for granted.”
When Valetini was a 12-year-old schoolboy, he had a classroom task to write a letter to himself outlining what he wanted to achieve.
“When I grow up I want to play for Australia in rugby,” were the first of the words on paper. It was as simple as that.
When Bull Rush becomes an Olympic demonstration sport, the selectors will make that phone call too.
