Freedom and Rugby

How the bejaysus did we lose to Kenya?  Kenya, for pity’s sake!  Give them credit, they played a good match, but what happened to us?  

Fans will come up with various ways of criticising the players, the team manager, the coaches, the FRU, the usual suspects.  

But the fact is that our boys cannot play their best rugby when their hearts are sick with worry about the situation at home.  When Speight held his coup, shortly before the end of the inaugural IRB 7s World Series, all Fiji had to do was make it to the semi-finals and the title was ours.  What happened?  We lost the quarter-final to Argen-flipping-tina.  Now this coup and our chance to defend our World Cup crown, we have lost to Kenya.  Kenya!  In the quarter-finals.  

To us, rugby is joy.  The free-flowing, chaotic sparkle you see when we play is indicative of our love of freedom, of the simple act of running, throwing and kicking a ball around, passing opponents and defying physics.  But when our hearts are not in it, no way can we capture that joy or the magic.  It’s something you can’t fake.  

Our rugby needs joy and freedom.  Vore has sucked that out of our lives.  How can we expect the boys to play, in the truest sense of the word, with our beloved country going to hell in a handbasket?  

God bless Fiji