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Sione Tuipulotu feels “I am where I’m supposed to be” as he prepares to captain Scotland against his native Australia in a November rugby international at Murrayfield on Sunday.
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The 27-year-old centre, frustrated by a lack of opportunities in his homeland, left Australia for Japan in 2018 with a sense of “professional anger” before arriving in Glasgow three years ago.
Earlier this week, Wallabies scrum-half Nic White said of Tuipulotu: “Unfortunately we let him get away, but he’s going to have a point to prove this weekend.”
But the midfielder himself told a pre-match press conference on Saturday he was at ease with representing the country of his grandmother’s birth rather than Australia.
“I think if you asked me that question maybe three years ago or when I first left Australia, I had so much, I suppose, animosity or professional anger inside of me just because I felt like maybe my talent really wasn’t looked after in Australia,” Tuipulotu said.
“But to be honest, now I feel like I am where I’m supposed to be, like here in Scotland. And I feel like all those things that happened early in my career were meant to happen because now I’m sitting here talking to you guys in the position that I am.”
Sunday’s match will be extra special for Tuipulotu because his 77-year-old Scottish grandmother Jacqueline Thomson will be in the crowd at Murrayfield after she was flown over from Australia as a surprise by Skyscanner, Scottish Rugby’s travel partner, earlier this week.
The match against the Wallabies will be the first time Thomson, born in Greenock, has watched Tuipulotu play rugby since he left Australia more than six years ago.
“It’s massively special,” he said. “I’m just trying not to make it bigger than it already is and I’ve taken my preparation real seriously this week. I’m just trying to not change anything.
“I know it’s a big game for, I suppose, the media, in terms of me playing back against Australia but it’s probably just more of a special game for me because my granny gets to watch me play and to be back in her home country.”
