In Fiji there is only one Olympic event anyone is thinking about. Forget Michael Phelps and his vast pile of gold; Fiji have never won a solitary medal at the Games in their history. Now, suddenly, they have a shot in rugby sevens, on the Games schedule for the first time this year. To say anticipation is brewing in a country of 300 islands but fewer than 900,000 inhabitants is a Pacific-sized understatement.
No matter the time of day, every game from Rio is being followed religiously back home. Even the prime minister has flown over to Brazil to stand by the side of the pitch when they train. Ben Ryan, their English coach, will be installed as the South Sea equivalent of Sir Alf Ramsey if they do win gold. If not, he and his squad will be tempted to take the slow boat home. “People expect nothing but gold,” confirms the Fijian captain Osea Kolinisau.
Nothing is ever guaranteed in Sevens and this Olympic tournament is proving more open than most. But to watch huge men like Kolinisauu, Vaterno Ravouvo, Viliame Mata and Semi Kunatani rampaging over for their tries against a decent US team in their final pool game was to be reminded Fijian rugby is gloriously different. No country on earth has such gifted natural athletes; the trick is to get them singing off the same prayer sheet.
Which is where the shrewd Ryan, a former Cambridge Blue who was once Newbury’s director of rugby, has done such a great job.
“We go to meals together, we turn off the lights together, there’s nothing we haven’t done as a group,” confirmed Ryan this week. “The end result is so important to them that they’ll buy into any of that.
“When we all come in together in the village a lot of heads turn. It’s a different look I guess. Spiritual is a really good way to sum up how they operate. They’re singing in the mornings, they’re singing in the evenings and they all pray together. I’m not hugely religious but I like that spirituality.”
The squad contains hotel porters, policemen and a prison warden, all dedicated to a sport introduced to the island by New Zealanders after the country became a British colony in 1874. A Kiwi plumber, who was helping to build a big hotel in the capital Suva, formed the country’s first rugby club in 1913 but it is Ryan who has sought to channel all that athletic talent in the right direction. He reckons it is only a question of economics that has prevented Fiji from mounting a podium in the past.
“Back home there are no PlayStations, we spend so much of our time outdoors. We’ve got 400 metre runners back home who could easily be into quarter and semi-finals at Olympics as a bare minimum. There are 40,000 people watching our athletics schools games; it’s an even bigger deal than Jamaica but they all stop at 18 or 19 years old. We have people who should have won medals in the last 30 or 40 years but they haven’t had the appropriate training or support staff behind them.”
With imminent plans to launch a Fijian institute of sport, it may be that other sports will soon be feeling their formidable presence. For now, though, all that matters is coping with the ever-rising Games pressure, although Ryan argues that could be a potential benefit. “We need pressure. Island life is nicely chilled and laid back. If we take things for granted or too easily the boys drop off. We’re embracing that pressure at the moment. The more the better. We hope that when we’re looking to our right or left in the tunnel at our opponents there’s a chance they might be feeling pressure at playing Fiji.”
There is the added incentive of putting their country on the world map for more positive reasons than the tropical cyclone Winston which killed 44 people and millions of pounds of damage in February.
With players like Toulon’s outstanding 21-year-old Josua Tuisova available to them, it is certainly going to take a mighty good team to beat them. “In Fiji, sevens is in their DNA,” Ryan says with a nod. A entire nation, even so, is holding its breath.
