Rugby fights for

Sports

Rugby fights for survival

Pacific Island rugby officials are eyeing a regional barbarians-type team to take part in the new Super 12 competition as part of efforts to keep rugby alive and well in the region.

By Andrew Kacimaiwai

The concept is being floated after the South African, New Zealand and Australian unions announced a new semi-professional provincial com-

petition involving provinces from the three

countries would start next year.

The Super 10 competition , with its Pacific qualifier, has been replaced by the Super 12, which will feature six teams from New Zealand , five from South Africa and three from Australia.

Pacific unions are fearful of mass defections to league if they are kept out of

the lucrative Super 12; already, the Samoans have lost two key players to the rival code since the World Cup in June and are warning of more to come if nothing is done to combat it.

At a post-match function after the Fiji- Tonga game in Suva last month, Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister, Ratu Timoci Vesikula, called on the unions to band together to form a regional team, and pointed to the British Lions (a side com prised of players from the Home Unions) as a precedent.

The last time Pacific Island players played together was in 1987 with a rebel South Seas Barbarians tour to apartheid South Africa led bv former All Black

Arthur Jennings.

The New Zealand Rugby Football Union chairman, Richie Guy, reassured the Island unions early last month that they were greatly concerned about the situation and would be working to develop the game in the Islands with their Australian coun terparts.

With a cluttered fixture next year (including five tests against World Champions South Africa), the NZRFU is trying to determine how to best help their

smaller neighbours.

New Zealand has long benefited from the infusion of Pacific Island players into their game alongside their Maori reps; even Australia is starting to sit up and take

notice with more Islanders now making the Wallaby side (former Auckland rep Daniel Manu has become the latest and joins Willie Ofahengaue and Hie Tabua).

The issue was given world-wide public ity in June during the World Cup in South Africa when the All Black’s giant Tongan bom winger, Jonah Lomu, was elevated to superstar status after a generally destruc tive performance in the tournament.

The performance by the Samoans in reaching the quarter-finals again and, to a lesser extent, the Tongans has helped to raise public awareness of the dilemma that the region faces.

The Super 12 is a direct result of an ownership war between Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited and the Australian Rugby League with massive amounts of money being offered to top union players to switch codes.

Guy said the Islands were very much in their minds although he would not say

how the Super 12 organisers would be able to help.

Australian Rugby Football Union chief executive Bruce Hayman also assured that the Pacific would not be forgotten, and that they were investigating ways of assist

ing in development.

At a regional rugby meeting in Fiji last year, ARFU chairman Leo Williams said they were enthusiastic about a regional team drawn from Tonga, Samoa and Fiji and was confident that such a concept would succeed.

“They would be very popular in Australia,” he said of such a team at the time.

The Australian and New Zealand unions have formed a joint initiative, the Joint Initiative Forward Planning, to devel op the game in the region.

One consequence of this has been more frequent tours by a New Zealand Divisional XV, comprised of players from

New Zealand’s second and third division sides.

Ironically, Island unions have almost as much to fear from their wealthier trans- Tasman neighbours as they do from league with players opting for the greener fields with its better opportunities.

The prowess of Pacific Island players has long been demonstrated in Sevens with near-total domination of the presti gious Hong Kong Sevens by Pacific teams, particularly by Fiji and New Zealand.

Meanwhile, Fiji took out the three nation championship with a 41-7 demoli tion of Tonga at Suva last month, but will not qualify for the Super 10 with that com petition now abolished.

Fiji went down to Manu Samoa 17-35 at Apia, but a makeshift Tongan side upset the Samoans 13-12 at Nuku’alofa before the Suva match. ■

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