Why Fiji Didn't Withhold Vakatawa (and Others)

Virimi Vakatawa stands out as one of the best three-quarter centers in the world with the Blues.

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• Born in Fiji where he played with the national team under 19, Vakatawa will play for the French side on Sunday.

• The Racing center is one of many players from the Pacific Islands who have chosen to turn their backs on their original selection.

• The lack of economic means and sometimes unfavorable rules deprive Fiji, Tonga, or Samoa, of certain elements of value. 

It is a competition of which one finds almost no trace, apart from one or two small articles in the archives of the Fijian press.

A tournament reserved for players under 19, three or four games played including a memorable jerk off against poor Vanuatu (89-3), and a final snatched with a butcher knife against Samoa (10-8).

We tried to dig a little deeper, but both the “team manager” and the coach at the time passed the gun to the left.

We must therefore be content to imagine the prowess of a very young Vakatawa for his only performances in a Fijian jersey, in the fall of 2009.

A tournament with Fiji and a sly departure

A phone call from Sireli Bobo later, and it is the departure for Paris on the sly.

“I played XIII, we won every week and the journalists wrote my name,” he says.

Bobo saw it on the Internet and he called my school to find out if I wanted to come to France, I said yes right away ”.

In the country, we do not move an ear, even if Vakatawa has made a small reputation thanks to his burst of speed.

11 seconds over one hundred meters barefoot, says the legend.

“Something like that, indeed, remembers Franck Boivert, former DTN of the Fijian Federation, installed in the Pacific for a lease.

School competitions here are very popular, I think he broke a record ”.

When the three-quarters of Racing reappears under the Fijian radars for a tournament of the world circuit of "seven rugby", five years later, he has already changed his face.

It is said without thinking badly.

The kid went out of his way to become French, at the cost of a perseverance to inflate the vanity of all the nationalist pillars of the time of the Pros.

The CM1 / CM2 vacation notebooks at the end of training, the

downloaded on the phone to swallow the words, and the nationality exam passed on the second attempt.

Vakatawa has already faced the Fijians with the blue jersey in rugby sevens - Michael Sheehan / AFP

"It's a Western thing to believe that the Fijians are bitter"

"I didn't even try to call him, concedes Ben Ryan, then coach of the Fijian rugby sevens team. His little brother was still playing in the country, but he was long gone and I knew he wanted to. play for France ”.

The most beautiful tricolor war prize of the naturalized Fijian trio in recent years, with Nakaitaci and Raka.

Seen from here, it looks like organized looting and neocolonialism, but it is an ethnocentric vision, Boivert fulminates.

“It is a false idea when we say in France that the Fijians or Tongans betray their country by choosing another selection.

People are very proud that such and such plays for the Blacks, for the Wallabies, or for the Blues.

Here in Fiji nobody reasons by saying that France "stung" Vakatawa or Raka.

People are happy that they are successful, they bring a lot to the country, they bring a lot of money to their families, and they contribute to the prosperity of their village.

It's a very western thing to believe that the Fijians are bitter ”.

France-Fiji: the Vakatawa-Radradra duel promises to be explosive

➡️ https://t.co/gBEr2Hq6iy pic.twitter.com/CPFX6ZrAPL

- Le Parisien (@le_Parisien) November 12, 2020

Even when it siphons the tank in significant proportions?

Ben Ryan admits that he sometimes gave in to discouragement on the road to the Rio Olympics.

Almost 30 players lost along the way, most of whom will never play for their country of origin, before the Brazilian consecration.

A gold medal, the first in the history of Fiji, which gave him the status of national hero, his face engraved on a coin on the end of an island to convince him to stay (in vain).

The Englishman would have preferred to observe a change in mentalities:

“Let it be clear, I will never criticize the players who choose to leave, I have seen the differences it makes in their lives.

Financially, the federation cannot fight.

After the Olympic title, the players received a bonus of 10,000 Fijian dollars.

It is considerable for the country, but it is incomparable with what one can gain in France or in England.

So young people only dream of leaving.

When I arrived, Fiji had beaten the All Blacks for the first time in their life in the benchmark college championship.

After a while, there was only the captain, Dolokoto, who was playing in the country.

All the others had left the island ”

Academies in the sights?

If Australian scouts are known for their aggressiveness on the local market, with promises of new money and a new car for the family, France is not leaving its share to the dog.

We are talking here about the famous academies set up by some top 14 clubs, ridiculed by Daniel Leo.

At the head of the Pacific Rugby Players Welfare (PRPW), an association which watches over the interests of pro and semi-pro players from the Pacific Islands, the former Samoan international has denounced for years “colonial practices”.

“I don't blame the Fijians who play for France, because it's a choice based on an economic criterion.

But if we want to make rugby a global sport, it is the small countries that must be included.

Taking players from Fiji is not necessarily a bad thing, but in return it takes an investment to take Fijian rugby to another level, and I don't see that happening at the moment ”.

His activism meets little echo on the spot, assures Boivert, now technical director of the Nadroga academy, the local branch of Clermont: “He is a little off the mark.

There might be a maximum of one or two players who land in Auvergne each year, and the rest make great internationals for Fiji.

Look at the player Yato has become in the top 14. 99% of Fijians who have chosen to emigrate to France are delighted.

And then it's not a one-way partnership.

A few years ago, a typhoon destroyed part of the village, well Clermont paid to rebuild part of the school.

There is even a building named after the city ”.

Vakatawa less criticized than Radrara when he misses a match

In the category of expatriates, those who have remained faithful to their homeland are paradoxically less well treated than international tricolors or wallabies.

Vakatawa, for example, arouses above all indifference, because Racing matches do not go beyond the framework of intimate broadcasting and the renewal of the Blues is a little too new for the moment.

"The Fijians who play abroad, if they are not performing well in selection, they get kicked," explains Boivert.

As soon as there is a significant defeat (hello Uruguay) voices are raised to call for local players ”.

Which would be like shooting another bullet in the foot, since the provincial championship does not have the level, obviously.

It is also the source of all the ills of rugby in the Pacific Islands.

To be competitive, players have no choice but to go into exile abroad, even if it means sacrificing part of their international career.

Last year, Tonga showed up naked at the World Cup, because between those who chose another jersey and those who are retained by their clubs for a small salary extension in cash, it is the double penalty guaranteed .

"Often the problem comes from the federations themselves, they deserve to be better managed internally," says Ryan, cryptic.

"Some federations could be better managed internally"

No doubt he is referring to the gloomy image of the Fijian federation and its former president Francis Keane, forced to resign last April.

Kean, zealous support for the election of the Beaumont-Lapasset duo at the head of World rugby and brother-in-law of Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, is accused, among other things, of having forcibly enrolled several Fijian rugby hopefuls in the framework of his post as head of the prison system in Fiji, "in order to improve the level of the prison staff".

Those who refused were never called up for the national team again.

His replacement, a certain John O'Connor, seems more presentable ("a very good, very honest type", assures Boivert), and the new staff of the Fijian XV formed around Vern Cotter has the mouth, frankly.

"The grants from the international federation have helped a lot to put this staff in place," breathes Ryan, favorably impressed.

Perhaps the sign that World Rugby is finally interested in the universality of its sport, after years of blindness.

The venerable institution still clings to principles more outdated than the Commonwealth, such as the good old rule of 100% profit for the host countries of the test matches, which means that a French international will receive ten times more than his Fijian counterpart. for a match played at the Stade de France, but things are going in the right direction.

In 2021, for example, it will take five years of residence in a country to qualify for its selection, against three currently.

Soon 5 years of residency to claim another selection

“World rugby is working hard on these issues,” Ryan continues.

Rule 8 [the one which governs the selection procedures] seems to me to be fairly fair with the new law of compulsory 5 years abroad before changing nationality.

We just need to be able to go back sometimes for certain players, who find themselves blocked because they had one or two selections for seven with New Zealand and who can no longer play with their country of origin ”.

For Vakatawa, now indisputable within Fabien Galthié's XV, the question has not arisen for a long time.

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