{"id":8645,"date":"2025-07-20T14:49:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T14:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/8645\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T14:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T14:49:08","slug":"british-and-irish-lions-sione-tuipulotu-on-returning-to-melbourne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/8645\/","title":{"rendered":"British and Irish Lions: Sione Tuipulotu on returning to Melbourne"},"content":{"rendered":"

Centre Sione Tuipulotu says he returns to his home city Melbourne with a chip on his shoulder going into the second British and Irish Lions Test with Australia on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old, who scored the Lions’ opening try in a 27-19 first Test win<\/a> over the Wallabies in Brisbane, started his career at Melbourne Rebels but chose to play his rugby away from Australia after struggling to nail down a regular starting spot.<\/p>\n

Following a move from Japan to Glasgow Warriors in 2021, Tuipulotu opted to represent Scotland, who he is eligible to play for through his grandmother.<\/p>\n

“If you had asked me when I first moved from Melbourne I would say yeah, it’s personal,” Tuipulotu said.<\/p>\n

“There’s still a chip on my shoulder. What has got me to this point is having that chip on my shoulder. But in terms of me being bitter about Australian rugby, not at all.<\/p>\n

“I wasn’t good enough to play for the Wallabies when I was in Melbourne. It wasn’t a selector problem, I wasn’t good enough, that’s plain and simple.<\/p>\n

“I owe everything to Scottish rugby because they’ve made me the player that I am today.<\/p>\n

“Now I get the chance to go back to Melbourne and play in my home city and hopefully close out a Test series. The stars have aligned for me and I feel very grateful.”<\/p>\n

The Scotland captain watched the Lions Test series with Australia in 2013 with his brother Mosese, who plays his rugby in Scotland with Edinburgh.<\/p>\n

”My little brother, Mosese, was flag-bearer for the game. It was pretty cool man. It’s crazy that 12 years later I’m playing in one of these Test games,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Centre Sione Tuipulotu says he returns to his home city Melbourne with a chip on his shoulder going…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-8645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}