Where rugby is passion

- Waikato Times - Saturday, October 31, 2009 3:43 PM

THEY play it on the beaches, they play it on tiny remote islands on horrendously rough surfaces and they play it in the rural villages.

Rugby is number one in Fiji and you don't have to go far to find evidence of that.

Fiji's reputation for sevens is well established.

Some would say their success in that game and penchant for producing fast wingers and players who all love to run with the ball has held back their progress in the 15-a-side code, but in Fiji there is no lack of passion for the full version of the sport.

A visit there this month happened to coincide with the last Sullivan-Farebrother Trophy challenge, the proud province of Nadroga, based in Sigatoka, thrashing Naitasiri 31-6 at Nausori, north of Suva.

Celebrations were long and loud, starting with the prolonged drive back to Sigatoka, stopping at villages where supporters followed the tradition of throwing water over the team bus and supporting buses and cars.

"They threw kava as well as water over us and they just wanted to look at the trophy," team member Epeli Natuikata said.

"It took us about four hours to get back and we didn't get there until about two o'clock Sunday morning."

Natuikata is from the village of Tau, a former thriving limestone mining area where rugby seems to be treated even more royally than in the rest of Fiji.

"They don't just love rugby here, they are drunk on rugby," Manueli, a visitor to the village, told me during a trip there.

There is no employment for the young people of Tau and young men return after a few brief years of secondary schooling to live in the village, helping do village work within the co-operative community that Fijian villages are, fishing and training and playing for the powerful village rugby team with the dream of becoming professional players overseas.

Natuikata, one of four Nadroga players from Tau, who also boast past Fijian representatives, has already represented Fiji at the Namibia Sevens this year as a lock who can play on the wing, while Asaeli Boko is in the Flying Fijians for the current European tour.

"The boys train twice a day here but we don't have many facilities and (the Nadroga players) have to go to Sigatoka to go to the gym," Tau assistant team manager Saicenasa Namisi said.

The village rugby club members plant, tend and harvest a small pine plantation above the village in order to raise money just to buy new jerseys and even then they tend to wear them for about five years. Sponsorship is non-existent.

"It's very difficult for us. It's taken a big effort because we don't have another sources (of finance)," Namisi said.

The rugby team officials and village elders are adamant their young players ooze talent but lack development opportunities. The thought of publicity back in Waikato – a name they know of as a rugby area in New Zealand – brought a flood of player profiles furnished by the various team members.

"The children from here have blinkers on and just dream of the chance of scholarships overseas to further their education and make a career of rugby," Namisi said.

Waikato's links with Fiji, usually through Hamilton Boys' High School, have tended to be in recent years with the Suva end of the main island Viti Levu, but the Tau officials want people here to know just what a pool of untapped talent they have.

My week-long visit to Fiji, organised by Tourism Fiji, took me to various tourist destinations but in that time I managed to see an inter-island sevens tournament on tiny Yanuya, one of the Mamanuca group of islands, and Uprising Resort team members practising with games of touch on the beach at Pacific Harbour before heading off to the Byron Bay Sevens in Australia.

Resort team players, who are all employed at the resort by their rugby-mad owner, tell me they are lucky that he also covers injury treatment costs.

Elsewhere, players fend for themselves and often fall by the wayside when injured, only able to afford traditional remedies.

But the poverty and scarcity of material luxuries in Fiji does not affect the passion for rugby, nor the smiling faces.

They love life and rugby in equal quantities.