From The Times :
A potentially historic transformation of rugby in the Pacific Islands was put in place today with the pledge of more than £7 million of funding from World Rugby to help create two new franchises to play in the Super Rugby competition starting next year.
The two teams that would be formed are the Fiji Drua, which would be a solely Fijian team, and Moana Pasifika, which is to be a combination of Samoan and Tongan players. Their inclusion in Super Rugby has yet to be rubber-stamped by New Zealand Rugby. However, The Times understands that all the financial agreements are now in place for it to go ahead.
The Pacific Islands are the great providers of rugby talent to the world but have never come close to fulfilling their potential in the XV-a-side game on the world stage. However, according to Ben Ryan, who coached Fiji to the Olympic sevens gold medal five years ago, this new arrangement “could be the game-changer”. He said: “To get a professional rugby franchise on the island was the No 1 thing that we needed. This is brilliant.”
“This is the missing piece to our rugby puzzle,” John O’Connor, the chief executive of the Fiji Rugby Union, said.
If, as expected, the teams are now welcomed into Super Rugby, Fiji Drua will be based in Suva. The Moana Pasifika team will be based in New Zealand, primarily because there is not the infrastructure, mainly medical, to stage regular games in Samoa or Tonga.
World Rugby will fund both new teams to the tune of £1.2 million a year for an initial three-year period. The funding is part of a tri-partite arrangement where the national governments will be a partner and a third partner will come from private investment. All three sides of the deal are now in place for both teams.
If these two teams are welcomed into Super Rugby, as World Rugby now expects them to be, it is hard to understate the potential impact it could have on rugby on their islands and the success of their national teams.
It has become a traditional part of the World Cup sideshow that Fiji, Samoa and Tonga arrive without many of their best players and without many of the advantages that fuel the campaigns of the more successful nations. Finally, the Pacific Islands have a genuine chance of hitting the heights themselves because they will get to see what the competition is like on a more level playing field.
The creation of these franchises means that the three nations need no longer be providers of professional rugby players to the rest of the world because there will now be jobs for them at home. The income made by professional rugby players playing abroad, and then sent back home, makes rugby one of the biggest industries in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.
Too often, though, players find they cannot escape club contracts to play international rugby, many players have switched nationalities, and many others have found adapting to European life to be an unhappy cultural and mental challenge. Many players will no doubt continue to follow the money abroad. However, the difference now is that they will have a choice.
The franchises will also provide a link between the academies at home and the national team. All three nations produce large numbers of playing talent, but there was never a pathway to the top.
Now the best young players can decide to play for these new franchises and there will then be a link to the national team. This will allow a core of the national team players to practise and play together. It will also mean that there is no problem for player release during international windows.
No coaches have yet been appointed to these teams but it is understood that Vern Cotter, the Fiji coach, will be either a consultant to the Fiji Drua or its head coach.
Always a Wasp
Topic: Fiji, Samoa and Tonga to form two P I Super Rugby teams in ‘game-changing deal" (Read 1022 times)