Bula Teivovo Rugby Nuts!
The Rugby World Cup 2015 (RWC) got off to a rip-roaring start, thanks to our Vodafone Flying Fijians playing out of their skins, especially the forwards, to have England on the rack and ripe for the taking, right up to the 68th minute of the game when it was only 11 – 18 and could just as easily have been 17 – 18 had our kickers been on song. With just 12 minutes to go, the opening game of the RWC was poised to be one almighty boil-over at Twickenham!
Just 12 minutes and Fiji could have created history and turned the world of rugby upside down forever and ever, Amen; we were that close to a miracle.
Then against Australia and again against Wales at the Millennium Stadium – where we had them both by their sweaty balls, with upsets on the cards again; but in the end, we just couldn’t finish them off – all three big guns in the Pool of Death.
Instead, we were swept away by the tide of rugby history; back to the South Seas with our brothers in arms – Tonga and Samoa, who both had forgettable RWC campaigns, which I fear may have been our last chance.
Only Japan made waves at RWC 2015, drowning South Africa in wave after wave of red and white Samurai Warrior attacks: End result – their Coach Eddie Jones is now the Head Coach of the richest rugby nation on earth – England.
I sense the tide has turned and we three small Pacific Island rugby-playing nations, who for a century have fought way above our weight and caused the occasional ripple on the rugby field, have missed our chance and instead; other Tier Two rugby-playing nations with much bigger populations and millions of more TV sets, like Japan, Georgia, Italy and Romania are going to surge ahead of us.
Consider these key facts:
- 25 million Japanese tuned in to watch their heroes at the RWC
- World Rugby has built no less than ten High Performance Units in Georgia
- World Rugby’s biggest slap in our face – after a century of playing the game, the Board of World Rugby finally relented and gave us Tier Two natives a voting seat at their table, BUT so pathetically, sadly and incredibly stupidly, they also tripled the value of each of their voting seats, so they now each have three, votes to our one.
What on earth are they so scared of – the South Seas savages at the gate? Are we going to eat them, or worse steal all their money?
Please give us due respect and some dignity, so that when we all sit around the table and talk rugby, we smaller rugby-playing nations at least feel we‘re getting a fair hearing and our votes are all equal in value.
The smart thing World Rugby should have done was just give us our votes so that we all have one each like any normal organisation and if they really felt a need for extra security (which they apparently do), they could have simply invoked a special “veto vote” whereby any six of the old farts, including England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, France, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa can get together, vote as a block and this in effect vetos the vote regardless of which way the majority voted; but no they had to rub our faces in the dirt, three votes to one.
What a joke.
– Culden Kamea
