Billy Sela was a bundle of fun the other day, enthusiastically shooting the breeze with RugbyPass from the England U20s team hotel in Newcastle. He was late to the Tuesday afternoon Zoom, an overrun at training pushing back the original rendezvous time, but the delay didn’t fluster him in the slightest. Neither did our first question. Why is he now listed on team sheets as Vilikesa and not Billy?
“So coming through, Billy was the name,” he said with a smile, embracing the opportunity to explain the recent change that has happened with Bath and England age-grade. “On all the team sheets, I put my name down as Billy.
“But later on, my parents wanted to see my government name because it is a Fijian name and they see more pride in seeing Vilikesa, so I was like OK and asked them to change it to Vilikesa… but everyone still calls me Billy around here.”
With dad hailing from Kadavu and mum from Moala, these Fijian roots mean so much to the English-born tighthead. He has visited twice, most recently in 2018. “One of the best moments of my life was going back to the islands and meeting all my family I’d never met. My family is actually massive and I never realised how massive. I’d so many people come up and say, ‘I’m your cousin through your mum, through your dad’. I was like, ‘What!’ That was definitely incredible.”
Given his adoration for the Pacific Islands, it’s no surprise to learn it was the fast-tempo way the Fijians play rugby that piqued Sela’s interest in the sport where he was a late starter, only getting going at Royal Wootton Bassett RFC after the family made a 2016 switch from Aldershot to Lyneham in Wiltshire.
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“We used to watch a lot of sevens,” he explained. “We’d watch the Hong Kong 7s actually; that is probably one of my favourite memories as a family, watching rugby and supporting Fiji, so that pushed me to play rugby and motivated me to go far in it.
“When they won the gold in Rio, we were moving house at the time and left the TV until last. We moved everything out and when the rugby finished, then we finally moved. My dad is in the army and we were located in Aldershot, but we moved over to Lyneham, which is near Swindon and in the Bath catchment area. That is where rugby took off.
“I’d never played, I never touched local rugby until I was in year eight when my school friends got me down to the local club. In Aldershot, football was the main thing and rugby wasn’t really on the table. But when I came to the Wiltshire area, rugby was more seen.
‘In the whole of year seven, my friends were nagging me to get down to Royal Wootton Bassett and then in year eight, I decided to actually go and try it out. The first session I went I loved it and never looked back. It was chill to be able to play and meet my friends outside school.”
On the surface, the Sela rugby story appears to be a soaraway success. The 19-year-old’s Gallagher Premiership debut for Bath came against Leicester last September following a stellar double-winning season with Mark Mapletoft’s England U20s. However, his dream of making it as a pro very nearly died when released from the Bath U16s.
The rejection hurt for quite some time but everything worked out well in the end when Sela agreed to change positions from No8 to tighthead at a trial the following year. “Coming through I started as eight, was playing as eight, and when I got into the academy I wanted to play as eight,” he said, telling the story of his initially rocky time at Bath.
“I got dropped U16s at Bath. Honestly, that was probably one of the best things that happened to me. At that time, I kind of got complacent because I was set in stone that I was going through the academy. So when I got the setback it was a reality check.
“At first, any time something came up with Bath, I would have that sick feeling, that feeling of heartbreak. I was sad but I then realised I had to use this as motivation to get to where I wanted to go in life. I used that to drive me. It was definitely a stepping stone that I will always remember.”
His big break happened by chance. “I came in U17s for a last trial and that is when I met Nathan Catt, who is our scrum coach here right now (with England U20s). I was playing eight at the time and we were doing a scrum session and he pulled me out. He was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, what are you doing? You need to be a prop’.
“So he moved me from an eight to a prop in that first scrum session with him and then told me to come to Beechen Cliff. That’s where I went in sixth form and he just helped develop my game as a prop, got me to scrum how I am scrumming now. It’s a huge thanks to him I have actually made it this far.”
The Bath club website lists Sela at 116kgs but he packs a mightier punch than that, tipping the scales at 123. “The weight came naturally but I always struggled with gym,” he continued. “That was one of the first things that was always a work-on, the S&C, because I never started gyming properly until I got to sixth form.
“Genetics was why I was big. I never really gymed and when I went into sixth form, they were telling me to gym but they left it to me to decide so I skipped it. Nathan started noticing that I would skip and would get on my case, telling me I had to gym if I wanted to make it far. He even did one-on-one sessions gyming at Beechen. That made me stronger.”
So strong that he has rapidly accelerated up the ranks at Bath. Rather than getting sent out on loan to aid his development like some of the other Rec youngsters, Johann van Graan told RugbyPass at the start of this season that Sela would be a first-team option.
Billy Sela on the bench for Bath alert!#FutureStars https://t.co/n5WBaP9IuB
— NextGenXV (@NextGenXV) September 27, 2024
His tuition is now seven games deep with Springboks international Thomas du Toit and England pick Will Stuart enhancing his learning. “I’m so thankful. Even when I am not doing a scrum, I’m sitting there watching and they are giving me tips. They have been really helpful in my game. Thomas du Toit and Will Stuart are the type of people I look up to at the club. They are just so good at doing what they do.
“Thomas du Toit would literally pull me aside and tell me, don’t do anything, just watch me and how I set up, what’s good and what’s bad and he would test me. Having him around is like having a father figure kind of. He is so good at teaching.”
There is definitely no imposter syndrome with Sela playing in the front row following his career-making conversion from No8. “There were definitely a lot of those days (getting schooled) when I first joined in but I knew what I had signed up for. I remember all the first-year academy boys I signed with, we had a house we got given by Bath and every training session we would come back and we were all knackered.
“We were, ‘Why did we sign up?’ But your body just gets used to it physically and I feel everyone is suited to the physicality that it is now.
“I have still got videos of me when I first joined the senior academy and I compare how it was before to what it was now and just see how far I have come. You don’t actually realise how much you have developed until you look in the past and see I have improved my game. That sits deep with me, helping me go further even more.”
There are still some awkward twists in what he described as God’s plan for him. “Religion is always an important thing for me. God’s always first in my life because I grew up a Christian in a Christian household and everything that has happened in my life I believe has happened for a reason and I feel like he is in control.”
These beliefs were tested last July. Going for a poach against the Junior Boks in Cape Town, Sela suffered a grade 2C hamstring tear that ruled him out of the rest of the World Rugby U20 Championship and he was sat on the family sofa back in England when Finn Carnduff and co defeated France in the final.
“It was a bunch of mixed emotions,” he admitted. “I didn’t know whether to be happy or kind of sad when we won. I saw everyone getting their medals and lifting the trophy. I was like, ‘I missed it!’ I had worked so hard with them for the whole year and we put everything together as a team and then I just missed the last bit, that bit of glory at the end.
“I was happy for them at the time but was also sad I missed out on the experience with them. They did send me a medal, to be fair, and I still see myself as a World Cup winner because I did put a bit of effort into the team, but fair play to everyone else who did play.”
24′ ENG 17 – 10 ITA
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Billy Sela crashes over for England’s third try#ENGvITA | #U6N18
— England Rugby (@EnglandRugby) April 12, 2023
The Sela plan is to have a second crack at the U20 Championship after England’s Six Nations title-defending campaign. They are now three wins for three after beating Scotland 57-13 on Friday night in Newcastle, a match where he provided bench cover for Tye Raymont after starting the opening matches. “U20s camp feels like my second home. Bath is my first home and this is my second; I’m so used to the coaches and how they run stuff.
“I just enjoy every single moment with these boys. They do have some new faces around, so we are not the same team we were last year. But in my second year, I now see how Asher (Opoku-Fordjour) was. When I was doing my first year, he was doing his second. Training is just another thing now. You’re used to it, your body is atoned to it. It’s just second nature now.
“The brotherhood is still strong. I felt like we had to get the first game out of the way in Ireland and once we got that win, I felt like we connected and bonded together more strongly. It definitely helped us build together and get that brotherhood we wanted.”
Get that ‘hood right and Test-level rewards can quickly follow going by the success of Opoku-Fordjour and other U20s graduates breaking into Steve Borthwick’s senior squad, a group that this week included Henry Pollock, Sela’s current age-grade teammate.
“Honestly, it’s quite incredible to see how the players that I have come up with and even seen on TV recently playing 20s have made it into the seniors shows us that anything is possible. Literally, Asher was in this position last year and then he has gone ahead and made his senior debut. That’s how close we are to touching senior rugby and U20s is just the best building block to get us to that level. You are always excited to play these games.”
