For several years in the early 1990s, Rudika Vida did the grind with a couple of Croatia's unfashionable football clubs. He was a useful striker. His career peaked during the 1993-94 season, when he scored 26 goals in 34 league games for NK Belisce. For all his goals, the club still only finished 12th out of 18 teams.
Rudika never reached the heights his son, Domagoj Vida—hero of Croatia's FIFA World Cup quarter-final victory over Russia—would scale, but he did teach him an important lesson. He drilled into him the need to practice his heading of a football.