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Wales' scrum-half Mike Phillips is tackled during the 2011 Rugby World Cup pool D Wales vs Samoa match (AAP Image/AFP, Philippe Lopez)
The Samoan centre Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu has made a perfectly valid point in his now-infamous twitter about the difference in the scheduling of matches for the Tier 1 and Tier 2 teams: “Please, all we ask is fairness. If they (Wales) get a week, give us a week. Simple.’
The principle of each team having the same number of days before matches is fair. But it is not simple. As the IRB points out, the television companies pay huge amounts of money for their rights to televise the Rugby World Cup tournament.
And they want the big games on the weekends and the lesser games during the week.
Samoa playing Namibia is, unfortunately, a lesser game in terms of interest for the television audience around the world.
Samoa has a vested interest in the Rugby World Cup tournament generating substantial amounts of money. They had to raise money to get the team to New Zealand for the tournament.
The IRB, also, gives the country substantial amounts of money for development in terms of coaches and tournaments for the national side to compete in.
This same argument applies to the other second-tier countries Namibia, Tonga, USA, and Russia, who have had to endure, like Samoa, a short turn-around for at least one of their matches.
None of these teams aside from Samoa could be deemed to be a serious contender for a finals position. But coming into the tournament Samoa definitely was that.
The team’s last match before the Rugby World Cup tournament saw Samoa monster the Wallabies at Sydney, an achievement that few teams can boast of.
Of course, the Rugby World Cup scheduling committee could not know of this outstanding result when they were creating the draw for the tournament.
As it is they tried to accomodate the interests of the television channels and Samoa in the way they scheduled the draw. Samoa played Namibia, the weakest team in the tournament and a side that is not actually in the top 20 teams in the world, on Wednesday September 14.
Then Samoa was scheduled to play Wales, a crucial match for both teams, on the following Sunday, September 18.
A further point to note here is that Namibia played its first match of the tournament on Saturday September 10. Then the side had to back up against a fresh Samoan team playing its first match four days later.
So Samoa was playing a side that had had a very short turn-around.
All things being considered, the scheduling has been about as even-handed (bearing in mind the television imperatives) as you could hope for.
One other point about the treatment of Samoa, too, is that the side has not been required to travel very far for its matches, in comparison with the Wallabies and All Blacks.
Aside from Rotorua and Hamilton, which are a very short air flight from Auckland, all their other matches are in the Auckland area.
Fuimaono-Sapolu is a qualified solicitor, as well as being a professional rugby player. He must have known the rest of his Twitter comments were over-the-top invective.
‘IRB ****heads, suspend me but give Samoa the same days off as Wales. It’s obvious the IRB are unjust. Wales got 7 days, we got 3. Unfair treatment, like slavery, like the holocaust, like apartheid. F*** u … Give Wales off and give Samoa a week! We would kill them.’
Comparing the scheduling of a rugby tournament to slavery, the Holocaust and apartheid? Such an over-reaction diminishes whatever force there is in Fuimaono-Sapulo’s case.
But there is an underlying chauvinistic tone to other Twitter comments which reflects, unfortunately, a great deal of ethnic triumphalism from some supporters of Samoa.
Many of these supporters have bad-mouthed New Zealand, Australia and England for stealing players who should be playing for Samoa. Apparently anyone with Samoan bloodlines are automatically Samoan, and really only eligible to play for Samoa.
It is interesting that the side with the most number of outsider players in Rugby World Cup 2011 is Samoa. 15 of its players were born in New Zealand of Samoan background.
The fullback Paul Williams is the son of the famous Bryan Williams, one of New Zealand’s greatest All Blacks, and now president of the New Zealand Rugby Union.
The whole issue of who is eligible to play for which country is a difficult one. Before the IRB brought in its generally sound rules about eligibility, players could play for more than one nation. The great Australian halfback Des Connor also represented New Zealand.
In the amateur days such transfer were rare. But in a professional era the easy transfer of a player from one country to another could set off bidding wars along the lines of what happens in the big football leagues.
Imagine how much money England or France would be prepared to pay for Dan Carter? Or the All Blacks for Will Genia?
The IRB rules are that once a player is selected for a national side that player cannot play for any other side. This is a sound rule. It stops poaching dead in its tracks.
Also, if a player plays rugby at a senior level in a country for which he is not eligible by birth or bloodline, he is eligible to play for that national side. The younger Tuilagi playing centre for England is a case in point.
England, incidentally, has a foreign-born contingent of eight players, the most of any of the Tier 1 countries.
Samoa, as I have noted, is also the fortunate beneficiary of this rule.
Rather than pointing the stick at Australia and New Zealand for ‘stealing’ its players, Samoa, Tonga and Fiji need to watch France and England which are embarking on a deliberate policy of recruiting youngsters from the Pacific Islands with a view of ensuring their eligibility to play for their ‘adopted’ national sides.
There has also been an argument from Samoa, Tonga and Fiji that if a player who has represented another country but has Islander bloodlines is coming to the end of his career, he should be eligible to play for his bloodline country.
To my mind, there is less to this argument than meets the eye. For this to notion to have any chance of working (and I don’t think there is much chance, anyway) it would have to be contained within the Samoa-Fiji-Tonga nexus, and (this is most important) could only be one way, from the big power to the smaller rugby power.
The complexities involved in all this would be formidable. The present system has the advantage of being a simple (but not simplistic) model.
I would argue that opening up the New Zealand talent pool to the Island powers would suit the interests of Samoa, Tonga and Fiji above anyone else.
There is, of course, a Wallaby twist to all of this. Radike Samo, born in Fiji, was selected for the Wallabies years ago in 2004, winning six caps.
He seemed to have reached the end of his career in Japan a few years ago.
Ewen McKenzie brought him back from Japan to play for the Queensland Reds to cover for James Horwill, and was dubbed “outstanding”.
Robbie Deans promoted him to the Wallabies, once again.
He played a storming match for the Wallabies at Brisbane where he scored one of the great individual Test tries. He is one of the old men of the 2011 Rugby World Cup tournament.
The point here is that it’s hard to tell when a player’s career is really ended.
