WHEN Taniela Tupou hits Ireland with 134kg of super-sub power it will be the teaser to a 15-year career that can take him to the top as a Wallabies prop.
Queensland Reds coach Brad Thorn, the former All Black hardman, is not prone to over-extravagant predictions so when he does talk up potential, you listen.
“Tongan Thor” is rebranded as “Aussie Thor” in the gold jersey that brought him to tears when it was anthem time before his debut Test in Edinburgh late last year.
He is still just 22 but, in the six months since, he does seem to have jumped in maturity yet again.
There have been four ages of Thor already.
Saturday may prove another when his scrummaging and a rampaging run or two on those palm trunk legs can change the course of a massive Test match at Suncorp Stadium.
In 2014, when he arrived from Auckland as an awe-struck 18-year-old fan of Quade Cooper, he was welcomed as a fridge-emptying lodger at the home of then-Reds coach Richard Graham.
In his first trial for the Reds in 2016, he was twisted inside out at scrum time by All Black Joe Moody.
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By last year, he was a regular asset for the Reds and such a dominator in Thorn’s winning Queensland Country side that Wallabies boss Michael Cheika invited him to Europe mid-tour.
This season, he has been damaging opposition props and scrums with a calculated force that has much to do with the mental switch flicked by Thorn.
“Thorny knows running comes natural for me but he told me straight that if I was good at scrummaging I would be a lot better prop,” Tupou said.
“He wants me to be the best tighthead in the world.”
Now the scrummaging is there, bowling ball runs like the one that skittled three Hurricanes defenders to set up a try for the Reds are so much more valuable.
“Taniela is at the beginning, as a tighthead, of perhaps a 15-year career and he has got that special X-factor which is really cool,” Thorn said.
Tupou spent match morning trying to learn all the words to Advance Australia Fair before facing Scotland last November.
“Me wanting to play for the Wallabies from my early days in Tonga has never changed, I just never realised I’d be lucky enough to one day be part of this,” Tupou said.
He is a 27-minute Wallaby for now but his stability tonight, when seasoned Irish props Tadhg Furlong and Cian Healy come off the bench, needs to be huge to finish off the Irish.
Tupou and rookie Test hooker Brandon Paenga-Amosa have formed a strong bond in the scrum and off-field.
Paenga-Amosa is loving every minute of the Test build-up and is still pinching himself that David Pocock and Michael Hooper are now teammates.
“I kinda walked into David Pocock’s room across the hall and he was playing all this awesome African music,” Paenga-Amosa said.
“Man, it was music you could grove to in the shower.”
Finding the groove with his lineout throws and scrum work will be enough on Saturday.
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