Navy rugby star Sam Matavesi to play for Northampton Saints in English Premiership final
Royal Navy rugby player Sam Matavesi is preparing to take to the big stage as he's set to play for Northampton Saints in the Gallagher English Premiership final this weekend.
Saints, who currently sit at the top of the Premiership standings, will take on Bath Rugby in the final at Twickenham on Saturday.
Should they win, Navy hooker Matavesi would become the first male serving military rugby player to achieve that feat since the English Premiership was launched in its current guise at the start of this century.
Training at Franklin's Gardens, the home of Northampton Saints, Matavesi is quietly confident of the team's preparation when he spoke to BFBS ahead of his Twickenham showdown.
He said: "We have got to be the first to punch.
"But for us, if we get our stuff right during the week like you've seen today, we'll have ... a fast day on Thursday and then finishing touches on Friday and then we're into it.
"It sounds crazy, but it's like week 52 or 53 since the World Cup pre-season and we've been here for so long, so it's pretty much second nature now what we're doing."
A win would cap off a fantastic season for Northampton and for Matavesi himself, who's had an incredible last 12 months in the game including playing for Fiji at the World Cup in France last autumn, where he helped Fiji get to the quarter-finals stage against England, the furthest the South Pacific nation has been in the World Cup in 16 years.
"It was incredible because we played England before the World Cup in a warm-up game, and for the first time ever we beat England!" he said.
"And that was like Courtney Lawes' one hundredth game, Lewis Ludlam played, Alex Mitchell played, David Ribbans played and it was incredible!
"I think just for us to take that step, I think people know how good Fijian players are, but it's a stepping stone and our potential is massive, everyone knows it."
But tragedy struck in Matevesi’s family as the Cornish Fijian lost his father only days before that quarter-final match against England.
"My older brother called me and said 'you need to come back', so I had to get a flight out from Marseille to Bristol, drive down from Bristol to Truro and he was in hospital very, very ill and he passed away that evening.
"It was tough, and it probably didn't hit home then, it probably affected me when we came back to Saints.
"I played the quarter-final, we had his funeral a week or two after, so I got straight down to Cornwall trying to sort the funeral out and bits and pieces, and I came back up [to Saints] and you are sort of straight into it.
"[Phil] Dowson and the club have been incredible, but I think now I have got a bit of a mojo back and I just needed to get away from rugby."
If his commitments to Fiji and Saints weren't enough, Matavesi is also an integral part of the Royal Navy setup and he certainly made a difference in their narrow one point Inter Service win over the Royal Air Force in Plymouth.
He missed the Army v Navy game at Twickenham so he could go and play for Saints in the European Championship semi-final against Leinster at Croke Park, a game they lost on the same day as the Navy were defeated by one point at the hands of the Army at Twickenham.
But with all that behind him, Matavesi's immediate focus is on the Premiership pinnacle.
"I just think it's clicked this year," he said.
"I think a lot of young boys are playing well, a lot of young boys are playing with freedom, and it seems like some of the older boys up front are coming to their prime as well and there’s an awesome mix at the minute."
Matavesi will line up for Northampton Saints at Twickenham on Saturday 8 June against Bath Rugby, with kick-off at 15:00 BST.
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