Fiji’s Super entry has the ingredients for a runaway success

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Fiji’s Super entry has the ingredients for a runaway success

By Morgan Turinui

This week, New Zealand Rugby announced that it had granted conditional licences for participation in Super Rugby 2022 to Moana Pasifika and the Fijian Drua.

After all these years, and so many individual players of note, it seems that the Pacific Islands have arrived. To put it simply, Moana Pasifika look to be another NZ franchise who will funnel players through to the All Blacks. The significant difference being a set-up based around cultural background, as opposed to geography.

Fiji will have a team in the 2022 Super Rugby competition.

Fiji will have a team in the 2022 Super Rugby competition.Credit: Rugby Australia

The huge positive is more people with Pacific backgrounds in roles contributing to governance, administration and high performance coaching, which is a rarity - apart from perhaps the latter - for rugby in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Fijian Drua on the other hand will be, and must be, a Super Rugby team supported by World Rugby and run by Fijian Rugby.

The Fijian Drua were an immediate hit in Australia’s NRC. They won the competition in 2018 and were wholeheartedly supported by the Fijian community wherever they played throughout their three-year stint.

The brand of rugby they played was, at times, irrepressible. Any other iteration of the Drua, including one where Australian and New Zealand Rugby try to use it as a part of their pathways, would be disingenuous.

With South Africa and Argentina’s futures in Super Rugby uncertain and all those fun away trips to the Republic and Buenos Aires appearing to be a thing of the past, the least SANZAAR officials could do is give the travel-starved current players a few days on the Coral Coast.

Filimoni Camaitovu of Fiji Drua knocks the ball to Peni Matawalu of Fijian Drua (3R) during the round 6 NRC match between Melbourne Rising and Fijian Drua in 2019.

Filimoni Camaitovu of Fiji Drua knocks the ball to Peni Matawalu of Fijian Drua (3R) during the round 6 NRC match between Melbourne Rising and Fijian Drua in 2019. Credit: Getty Images

The Drua should be part of the Australian conference in an initial stage of Super Rugby and if post-Covid travel and budgetary restrictions make a Fiji-based Drua difficult initially, then the Drua could be based in Western Sydney and a relationship established to play some games at Bankwest, the best viewing ground in the country.

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The Fijian Kaviti Silvertails are a good example of how this model could work. This Fijian selection rugby league team will be part of the NSW Cup for the foreseeable future. But a Super Rugby team is on a much grander scale.

The Australian Government, Rugby Australia and the World Rugby-backed entity that is Oceania Rugby are already working hard with the Fijian Rugby Union to help develop the community game and specifically to identify female leaders, while also using Fiji’s incomparable affinity with the game to strengthen communities via the values of Rugby.

The Fijian Drua in Super Rugby would be the Big Bang that accelerates and validates it all.

Regardless of where are they based, the Drua should be a Fijian team and the goal must be that they are a Fiji-based team. That is what needs to be done to support rugby in the Pacific with the ultimate goal to get Tonga and Samoa to the same place. (Add Japanese representation ASAP and it’s starting to look good commercially, and in a sporting sense).

What’s in it for Australian Rugby must also be a consideration, even as we assume our role as leaders in the region, and support the continued Rugby development of Tonga, Samoa and Fiji specifically, and Oceania Rugby as a whole.

I see twomajor positives a sixth team would give Super Rugby AU, if that competition is to continue.

First, there would be a third game per week which is desirable, and, seriously, what a team it would be. The Drua thrilled spectators in their stint in NRC and will certainly be very different to the way teams like the Rebels and Brumbies play. In style of play, they will provide a great challenge for the five Australian teams.

And second, the magnificent Fijian supporters. Wherever Fijian teams play rugby, their countrymen and women buy tickets, turn up in droves, wear their teams colours and put a raucous atmosphere into every stadium. They bring fun to every match their team plays in.

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The only strange part about the news of ‘conditional entry’ to Super Rugby of Fiji and Moana Pasifika is that it didn’t come from a SANZAAR announcement, or even a joint NZ Rugby-Rugby Australia announcement.

With Australia’s record of support for the Drua, RA’s position would seem obvious but some clarity from all of SANZAAR’s members would be encouraging.

It has been described as a new dawn for Super Rugby. But these are old friends from the Pacific, and their entry into Super Rugby is not before time.

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