Business
Rugby Blackbirders Snatching Island Boys
It's gross exploitation of the South Pacific
Blackbirders used to slip into harbours and lagoons with promises of good things over the horizon. Men like Bully Hayes or the more anonymous Peruvian captains would lure people aboard ships, seize them and sail them off into a life of slavery. These days the techniques are different, but the outcome is the same: white men are grabbing Pacific Islanders, not for the sugar cane fields of Queensland, or the mines of Peru, but for the rugby grounds of the old colonialists.
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Just about any rugby gathering in Fiji, Samoa or Tonga these days will have among its spectators white men looking for talent. Sometimes these self-proclaimed agents are doing it in the name of Australian and New Zealand colleges, while the more unscrupulous are trying to find themselves a piece of meat stock to put them in a comfortable income.
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The scandal behind rugby union and its gross exploitation of the South Pacific was sports pages fodder only. Growing dismay in the islands and the arrogant indifference of the white rugby authorities means it's becoming political. It has cultural significance too because of the central role in provincial life rugby plays across the Pacific.
Soon people will realise that their culture has more meaning than just a nursery for New Zealand rugby bosses. And while rugby likes to proclaim it is in an era of professional sport, when it comes to the Pacific Three‹Fiji, Samoa and Tonga‹the ex-imperial rugby powers display all the business ethics of phosphate miners.
Former All Black and Samoan Michael Jones says what is happening is shameful, "Young Samoan players are purposefully held in the New Zealand rugby system," he says. "They are used and abused and that is our major concern."
He says the trick is to take young talented players to New Zealand and have them selected to play for one of the New Zealand Sevens teams, or a Kiwi A team, and once they have done that, under the International Rugby Board
(IRB) rules, the new boy can never again play for Samoa.
The exploitative nature of Australian and New Zealand rugby was best illustrated by Joeli Vidiri who was plucked from Fiji's Nausori Highland in the mid-1990s to play wing for the Auckland Blues and then the All Blacks. He collected a couple of caps and some modest fame, climaxing with a hit song, 'Give Me Hope Joeli'. Then he disappeared, cast aside by New Zealand rugby, because like some house slave, he was no longer of any use to his employers. His kidneys failed and he now lives on dialysis.
New Zealand Rugby magazine exposed the shame of it all, reporting on how the New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) abandoned him. "I haven't heard from them," he told the magazine, "No phone call, no card."
Auckland Blues CEO Peter Scutts told the magazine he was disappointed and annoyed at the way the NZRFU had ignored Vidiri. "I think rugby has lost the plot in the last few years. I don't think a lot of administrators understand what they are doing. They talk about player's welfare but I don't think they can even grasp the meaning of those two words."
It's hardly a surprise: New Zealand rugby has grown and thrived on Samoan talent and support‹yet the All Blacks have never played in Samoa and never will so long as the dollar and racism rules. World rugby is controlled by the IRB (International Rugby Board) which could more usefully be called the Imperial Rugby Board as it is dominated still by the 19th and 20th century colonial powers: England, France, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. They call themselves the "Foundation Unions".
Unlike soccer's governing body, FIFA, other nations do not have any real say in the IRB; Fiji, Samoa and Tonga are required to play their international rugby to IRB direction, and yet they do not get a vote. The IRB publicly says it wants to make rugby union a global game, but in its own private documents it makes it clear the money and power can only rest with the select white few: "The Foundation Unions are both the on-field and financial backbone of global rugby," one IRB paper says. "They contribute the most to the success of the Rugby World Cup and also suffer the most disruption and financial loss during a World Cup year."
The bottom line, they say, is that they must take all the money they can and leave little for the smaller nations. Some pinprick of conscience did exist in the IRB and two years ago it called for a Northern Hemisphere versus Southern Hemisphere test match in which all the proceeds would go to developing nation rugby unions. Players from the rich unions torpedoed it.
For the Pacific Three, the issues boil down to this: They lose their best players to Australia and New Zealand. With the best players out, local rugby in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga declines, as is being witnessed now. And, of course, there is little money for development and administration. The Pacific Three are required by the IRB to play an exhausting round of rugby tests: Tonga, for example, had to fly around the world several times to qualify for this year's World Cup.
While away from their homes and playing tests in England or South Africa, the Pacific Three get no share of the gate revenue or television. They are pawns to make the rich richer. In theory the Pacific Three could make money by hosting occasional tours; they lack the population, stadium and television audiences and even when it comes to hosting a side such as Ireland in Samoa and Tonga in June, they lose money in the hosting. Revenue earned is usually around a third of the costs.
Sponsorship is hard to come by (Vodafone in Fiji, Vailima Beer in Samoa)and does not cover the costs. The rugby blackbirders now sweep through the Pacific, watching schoolboys tournaments, and handing out rugby scholarships to the favoured boys. While it might well be an individual godsend to the boy and his family, few of them ever return home and they are subjected to the manipulation that Jones talked about which makes it impossible to play for their homelands.
New Zealand rugby benefits from the acute ethical dilemma Pacific unions find themselves in: why deny an education to a skilled boy? It's like the glass beads the slavers used to lure them aboard. The Solomon Islands might well be a failed state, but soccer's governing body FIFA has taken a longer view and built them a stadium, sent them coaches and equipment. Meanwhile, the rugby blackbirders continue to pick the best over the rest of the Pacific.
