DUBAI // As Apollo Perelini, the mountainous former Samoan rugby international, saunters through the busy lobby of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel he cannot help but attract attention. It is not his fault. In a simple T-shirt, shorts and flip-flop combination, he is dressed as casually as any of the other holiday-makers milling about.
Yet his gigantic physique - not to mention the photographer assiduously snapping his image - screams "look at me". "I was coming down in the lift and a guy in there asked if I was a wrestler, he thought I was in the WWE," he says, with a broad grin of satisfaction on his face. He certainly has the moniker for it. Perelini, 39,earned his forename after he was born on the same day - July 16, 1969 - as the launch of the Apollo 11 space mission. He was just passing through Dubai this time, en route from his home near Liverpool in England, to Australia, where the Rugby League World Cup starts this weekend.
He was transiting in Australia for one day, before heading on to Samoa, where the disparate bunch of players he will be coaching in the tournament were busily introducing themselves to each other. Whenever Samoa's World Cup adventure does end - Perelini is adamant his side have a chance of winning the tournament - his return journey will reach its terminus in the Emirates. He quit his role as fitness and conditioning coach at the English Super League club St Helens, which he had held for four years, to take up a job coaching at the new Elite Sporting Academy in Dubai.
It is quite a change for the father of two. In the UK, he was a highly revered part of the furniture at one of Super League's biggest clubs. "I'd rather be at the bottom of the wave, when it is just on the rise, I want to be there when it starts," he says. "Sports are coming into Dubai by the day, and rugby has been starved here. I always look at a change as an opportunity, and when I was approached to join the academy I thought 'You only get these opportunities once in a lifetime'.
"I took the opportunity to go to the UK from New Zealand 14 years ago - and that was a risk. But I paved a career in the UK as a player, and also as a trainer. "Now it is a new chapter in my life, the chance to do something different and challenge myself." ESA is the brainchild of two other Samoans: Tim Cahill, the Everton footballer, and John Mamea-Wilson, a former Test rugby player who is a long-term resident of Dubai.
Based at Repton School in Nad al Sheba, the academy has been created with the main purpose of readying young sportsmen for professional sport. It is no empty promise and the recruitment of Perelini is evidence they mean business. "My speciality is developing kids - taking them from grassroots and making them into distinguished players," he adds. "We are going to look to develop a competition over here. I know the level may not be high, but if we can give them top-level training we can then look to take touring teams away to Europe or the southern hemisphere so they they can challenge their skills against top opponents.
pradley@thenational.ae
