Hearts, minds and a ’16th player’: How the Drua broke through in Fiji

Children in Fiji wear Drua T-shirts and play barefoot touch football in muddy, rainy fields. Sitiveni Rabuka, the prime minister of Fiji and a former international rugby player, is a fervent and outspoken supporter of the team.

Even though the Drua have only been in Super Rugby since 2022, it doesn’t take long to realize that this club—along with the Flying Fijians, who defeated the Wallabies in the Rugby World Cup, and their winning Olympic sevens teams—is as closely associated with Fiji’s pride in its sports.

In addition to their initial commitment from 2019 until 2023, the Australian government announced in October of last year that they would continue to provide financial support for the Drua’s men’s and women’s teams for the next four seasons. This announcement guaranteed that the club’s boisterous home ground, Churchill Park in Lautoka, would remain sold out for the foreseeable future.

 

The agreement, according to Rabuka, allows the nation’s youth the “opportunity to dare to dream about a life that sports can offer them.” He said that “we would never have seen the rise and success of our Drua men and women’s teams” without Australia’s backing.

 

Gaining support from both hearts and minds

Australia’s desire to back the Drua emerged from discussions with the Fijian High Commission in Canberra. Staff on the ground noted how deeply everyone in the nation loves rugby union and how Australia has to take it seriously.

 

The sport of rugby continues to be the first conversation starter at the bus stop, the coconut vendor’s stand, and the neighborhood roti restaurant. Television first came to Fiji to broadcast the Rugby World Cup in 1991.

It is no secret that China wants to have diplomatic influence on events in the Pacific; for the 2019 Pacific Games in the Solomon Islands, Beijing funded and constructed a brand-new $74 million national stadium. Given that Fiji is a major economy in the Pacific, Australia needs to have a close relationship with it. Rugby is the ideal instrument for fostering unity.

Despite participating in the National Rugby Championship from 2017 to 2019, the Drua were the only fully professional side in Fiji, much alone a rugby team.

 

Australia helped realize a once-impossible ambition by providing financial support to enable Drua to enter Super Rugby and Super W in 2022. The team will have all of its players reside in the nation full-time.

 

Chief Executive Mark Evans is not taken aback by the Drua’s achievements, either on the field or in the way that the community and businesses that have backed them from the beginning have welcomed both squads.

 

“It’s not surprising (that the Drua) have succeeded because rugby union is so dominant,” Evans said, despite years of criticism that Fiji’s economy wasn’t strong enough to sustain the Drua.

 

“The Drua have demonstrated that, in reality, one team can be supported with a comparatively small amount of outside assistance, including financial support—that is not true; the economy is roughly large enough to do so.”

 

It’s a source of pride, empowering, and provides people with a sense of identification and belonging that there are now 33 women and 50 men who play rugby on the island full-time. They get a lot of pleasure from it, and the nation gains a lot economically from it as well.

The growth of women’s rugby in Fiji

It is untrue to state that the Drua changed the landscape of women’s rugby in Fiji permanently after winning the Super W rugby championships in 2022 and 2023.

 

Fijian rugby has always begun with sevens, and after their women’s squad qualified for the 2016 Olympics in Rio, they motivated a whole nation of female rugby players to challenge a society that is frequently patriarchal. They then accomplished this in Tokyo in 2021, taking home a bronze medal and feeling like heroes.

 

Lailanie Burnes, a native of Fiji, first came to the nation to work in tourism before growing up in Manly. She later captained the Fijiana 15s squad and assisted in establishing the first women’s rugby team in Nadi.

 

Burnes recalls clearly the hardships her teammates faced in order to be taken seriously in the nation that is infatuated with rugby.

 

According to Burnes, “it wasn’t unusual for us to be told to leave the rugby pitch and to go back into the kitchen” anytime we went there.

 

One of the girls who played rugby with me had to conceal the fact that she was representing her country since her father didn’t approve of her for enjoying the sport.

 

She would always flee and hide whenever we had media, pictures, or anything else, making it impossible for us to see her in publications like newspapers.

 

Burnes has taken pleasure in witnessing the success of the Drua women’s squad after retiring in 2021. The players received sevusevu, a Fijian cultural custom that had hitherto been exclusive to men, and traditional greeting ceremonies from province chiefs and communities after winning their maiden Super W championship.

 

With a salary of $25,000 Fijian dollars (A$16,750) per player starting in June, several Drua Super W players will be the primary providers for their families or villages.

 

There were ten women’s teams in Fiji before to the Drua’s debut in the Super W in 2022. Currently, the nation is home to 36 women’s provincial teams and 91 under-18 girls teams.

“In this place, religion comes first.”
As part of the government’s PacificAus Sports program, former Wallaby and Fijian rugby league international Lote Tuquri, as well as former Fiji star Nemani Nadolo, have returned to Nadi to assist in coaching the men’s and women’s deaf rugby teams.

Both men recognize the importance of rugby in Fiji—on its beaches, in its villages, and in its towns—as their once-famous footwork is tested on a stretch of deep mud.

Nadolo played rugby for Montpellier, the Waratahs, and Leicester. He was born in Fiji, raised in Australia, and earned his living there.

With some envy, he now observes the bond that all Drua players share with their supporters. The athletes represent their families and fans on the field by living among them.

 

“They have their own team now playing in Fiji, which is incredible,” Nadolo remarked. “Rugby is second to religion here.”

 

“One thing about the supporters here is that they can be the harshest fans and are very critical, but you know, rugby makes people happy and smile a lot.”

Tuquri feels that the atmosphere created for Drua home games is among the most intense he has ever encountered anywhere in the world, as a player or fan, ahead of Saturday’s matchup against the Waratahs in Lautoka.

 

The Fijian crowd is quite supportive of their team, thus I believe there is an extra 16th player. Simply put, playing there is difficult because of the audience and the weather.

 

“In my opinion, Drua teams are a ten to fifteen point superior squad in Fiji.” It’s just the way they play and decompress after cheering for the squad.

 

“I don’t know when exactly, but they will score at some time in the game, and then it rapidly becomes two or three, and you can see the excitement in the players’ faces as their passes become a little more difficult and they look like they’re playing backyard football. It’s exciting to see them play beach footy.

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