Destroy

Rugby Fijians

Opposition

Rugby Union, which attracted

the biggest crowds of the Games apart from athletics, was the

biggest disappointment. Fiji,

which compiled cricket scores against everyone, was so far in front it didn’t matter.

The only competitive interest was in which team would go home with the silver and bronze medals. Little wonder the South Pacific Games Council has scrapped Union from a compulsory to an optional sport for the Tahiti Games. The result there also seems a foregone conclusion.

Locals had tabbed NG the inter national-class Fijians’ biggest chal lenger, but after NG had been beaten 79-0 by the champs (a point a minute) Moresbyites concentrated on men’s swimming events about half a mile away at the town’s Olympic pool where NG was winning things.

And in the final they were murdered 88-3 by Fiji.

Not that New Caledonia or the Solomons were any better than NG.

The Caledonians, mostly Frenchmen, were fit and keen but obviously soccer players, like the most colour ful team, Wallis and Futuna.

The Wallis players, with a rough and tumble frontrower called “Lulu” by a group of wildly partisan sup porters who erupted every time the ball—accidentally—got into Wallis hands, tried everything.

Fast and game, but hopeless tacklers, they dashed everywhere but to no avail.

New Caledonia managed to beat the Solomons and Wallis and Futuna by small margins. The Solomon Islanders couldn’t follow through moves and they kicked too much.

As for the huge, fast and far superior Fijians, who arrived after a successful Australian tour, it’s suffice to say in their runaway wins they took it in turn to score tries. Nineteen tries or so a match meant more than one per player. Tonga, with the smallest Games team, didn’t, un fortunately field a side. Their team was playing havoc in New Zealand in August.

Such a one-sided affair doesn’t augur well for good future Games Rugby—there will have to be much progress made outside Fiji.