Fijian rugby union president attacks growing greed in game

IN money terms, Fiji are amongst the poor relations of world rugby.

This week, further calls have been made for the International Rugby Board to stop the game falling into disrepair.

Fiji, quarter-finalists at the 1987 World Cup and battlers supreme in the last tournament against France, could fall off the map if rules aren't changed and money made available for the development of the game.

Since the game went professional in 1995, the likes of Fiji have had their playing resources pillaged primarily by New Zealand and Australia and, to a lesser extent, clubs in France and Britain.

Fijian Rugby Union President Pio Bosco Tikoisuva has attacked the merchants of greed.

"We have major problems in the Pacific Islands.

"This year, for the first time, the IRB sent a delegation of senior officials to see what was happening.

"Our ability to compete at a Test-playing level is under threat and the transition to professional rugby is to blame.

"When you consider the number of scouts in the Pacific these days offering rugby scholarships to islanders to study in Australia and New Zealand which puts them in the selection stream for the Wallabies and All Blacks, and not their countries of birth it is amazing the islands have enough players left to field a team.

"The Samoa Rugby Football Union has, for instance, revealed that 500 fully funded rugby scholarships were being offered to Samoan high school students each year which involved them leaving the country, largely to move to New Zealand schools.

"That's more than 30 teams of the best schoolboys being uplifted each year and moved from one country to another.

"Could you imagine the Scottish or Irish Rugby Union's allowing the English to undertake such an extraordinary pillage of future talent?

"The challenge to rugby is to make the World Cup as compelling as the soccer version. It should be to provide teams and players whose success inspires new generations to take up the game, to spread the gospel and to help the game grow in new countries and regions and amongst new generations, not hold it back."