Scroll back through Semi Radradra’s Instagram feed, past the snaps of the Fijian team celebrating their win over Australia, commiserating after their defeat to Wales, further, past their warm-up fixtures, the victory against England at Twickenham in August, the loss to France in Nantes the week before. Further still, through the Pacific Nations Cup, and their wins over Samoa in Suva and Tonga in Lautoka and Japan in Tokyo, and keep going all the way back to July, and there you’ll find a film of the squad treading, arm in arm, up through the thick black sand of the big dunes at Sigatoka beach on the south coast of Fiji.
The climb is “a rite of passage for Fijian teams”, says their head coach, Simon Raiwalui, “it’s where we go to get punished”. And it’s also where their journey to Marseille began. Fiji have taken the long way here, it’s been about 16 weeks since they gathered for their first camp, and 16 years since they last played in a quarter-final, in this same city in 2007, when they lost 37-20 to South Africa. Most of this squad remember exactly where they were when they watched it. “Back at the farm,” says Tevita Ikanivere. “With my father,” says Albert Tuisue. “He promised me one day I would be representing Fiji in a World Cup.”
And here he is. Tuisue is starting in the second row, one of six changes Raiwalui has made to the starting XV after their defeat to Portugal last week, along with Ikanivere, who gets the nod at hooker. Their regular, Sam Matavesi, is on the bench. He’s just come back from England where he had been visiting family because his father, the legendary Fijian player Sireli Matavesi, died last week. It is the second bereavement the team have suffered, after Josua Tuisova’s son Tito died of a long-standing illness during the pool stage. The fact both men are still here, and still playing, speaks to how much this World Cup means to the team. Radradra is back too, having recovered from a mild hamstring injury that meant he missed the game against Portugal. In that match it looked as if the Fijians might be flagging after all these weeks on the road. Dan Leo, the CEO of Pacific Rugby Welfare, said how worried he was about the effect of “tournament fatigue”, the “months of living in hotels, sharing rooms, never getting your own space” on top of the “mental toll of expectation”.
Raiwalui touched on it too. “We are looking to free ourselves up a little bit. Believe it or not, we were pleased that we lost to Portugal last weekend. Against Georgia we were a bit stagnant in attack, so we have worked on trying to free ourselves up in attack and enjoying the occasion. We want to enjoy the week, to enjoy the moment.” Radradra, who has more experience of big matches than most of his teammates, echoes that. “As Fijians, if we’re smiling nothing can stop us, so this week we have to enjoy it, to make the most of it, because this moment will never come back, we have to grab this quarter-final with both hands.”
Radradra is one of the more intimidating propositions in rugby whatever mood he is in but trying to tackle him while he’s grinning back at you feels like the sort of job that might induce sleepless nights. England, of course, already had a few of those while they were stewing on that eight-point loss to Fiji at Twickenham in August. Raiwalui has picked 10 of the team that started that game in his XV for this one. “England have progressed from that match,” he says. “They are playing well, and they will present a few more challenges now. It’s good that we had the chance to play against them, but it’s a totally different game.”
And a different game, too, to that defeat by Portugal, when they knew they were as good as through. Leo has described this one as “the biggest game in Pacific rugby history”. Raiwalui didn’t shy away from that description. “It is massive for our country,” he says. “We have a nation of 900,000 people that lives and breathes rugby.” The fans back home will be “out in boats and up in the hills wherever they can source electricity and wifi to watch the games,” he says. “We understand how much it means to them and we just want to do the country proud.”
There’s more. Fiji may have won the last Test against England, but the gap in resources between the two teams means they will always be underdogs. They are also playing for every second-tier team in the sport. “First and foremost I’m proud to be a Fijian, but I’m also proud of the so-called developing nation status. We are really pushing for the global game; how we improve it and how we create more opportunities, break the barriers down and open the game up.”
England may be the richest, and most well-resourced, but for all their advantages, Fiji have at least one over them: how much this match means to a team that has come such a long, hard, way to play it.
