Kolonga Rugby Gone Globa II
Dr Teena J. Brown Pulu
“You can tell I’m from Kolonga by the way I do things!”
Photograph 1: Utu-longo-a’a, Kolonga village rugby team in Auckland. The Kolonga forwards pack walking off the field from their game against Leimatu’a village in the Auckland Tongan Rugby Tournament 2007 at Marist Ardmore. This tournament is played annually November-December and is organised for village, chuch-based, ex-high school and neighbourhood teams of Tongan rugby players living across the four cities – North Shore, Waitakere, Auckland, Manukau – which constitute the greater Auckland Region.
New Zealand-born Pacific people
Photograph 2: Seminati Pulu, Douglas Charles Howlett and Rewi Maniapoto Amoamo. Three generations of family from Kolonga ‘i Tongatapu to Auckland New Zealand, three generations of sprinters and wingers training together.
Pacific People are one of the most visible minority groups in New Zealand. Accounting for only 6 per cent of the total population in the 2001 census, they are prominent on the landscapes of sports and the arts. The achievements of a few, however, are counterbalanced by poor socio-economic indicators for the majority of Pacific People. (Teaiwa & Mallon 2005, p. 207).
Growing up in Auckland New Zealand and being a high-achiever on the national and international stage makes one aware that their Pacific ancestry is a talking point – something that makes you seem a bit different. As Teaiwa and Mallon stated, very few Pacific People in New Zealand are outstanding achievers in their chosen field or profession while the majority are locked within the nation’s poor.
Globally sports and the arts can become pathways for success and inclusion for immigrants. But for the descendents of migrants – populations born in New Zealand, the USA and Australia where Pacific people are noticeable in particular cities and suburbs – social inclusion reminds a Pacific person that if they reach the top of their field they sit among the elite few and if it is lonely at the top then the road to get there and stay on top is even lonelier. For Douglas Howlett, professional rugby success has made him aware that he is the only Pacific person to have achieved certain records and milestones in his career.
In the age of globalisation, family connections to the Pacific Islands have become increasingly fragmented due to mass migration and population mobility. The sustainable development of high achieving and record breaking Pacific people is therefore an urgent priority. In the sprawling metropolis of Auckland where the majority of New Zealand’s Pacific people reside throughout four cities, the continuity of role models for youth affected by low socio-economic indicators is crucial to progress and for sustaining the most essential social relationship – kinship.
Three generations of sprinters and wingers
Photograph 3: Rewi and Douglas listen carefully to Semi’s instructions on how to perform the sprint drill with technical accuracy to enhance speed.
The potential for the All Black jersey to bring people together and be a medium through which people could celebrate unity as well as difference was highlighted by the appointment of Tana Umaga as the fifty-ninth All Black Captain and the first of Samoan descent in 2004. … Umaga’s statement on receiving the captaincy demonstrated his careful positioning of himself as ‘a New Zealander with Samoan parents’, who is proud of his culture and his parents’ background, but ‘a New Zealander first and foremost’ (Rutherford, 2005, C4). (Teaiwa & Mallon 2005, pp. 216-17).
Similar to the success of his friend and contemporary Tana Umaga, Douglas Howlett has accomplished a record breaking history, one which sets him apart as a high achieving New Zealander of Pacific descent inherited from his Tongan Mother. A revered world class All Black wing, Douglas retired from international rugby after the Rugby World Cup 2007 the All Black’s highest try scorer. On 27 December 2007 he left Auckland for Munster Rugby Football Union in Eire, the highest try scorer for Auckland Blues in the Rebel Sport Super 14 competition and for Auckland Rugby Union in the national provincial Air New Zealand Cup.
Teaiwa and Mallon noted the position that All Blacks of Pacific descent share in claiming their identity as New Zealanders with migrant parents from the Pacific Islands. Pacific ancestry can provide a motivating factor to succeed in professional sport because of the social value that migrant families place on high achievement especially in New Zealand’s national sport, rugby, where social status, inclusion and financial benefit can be gained.
Pacific ancestry, as in Douglas’s case, can also provide a family support structure that nurtures the development of one’s sporting potential. His personal trainer and maternal Uncle, Semi Pulu, has worked with Douglas since he was 13 years old. Semi has a systematic method for sustaining high achievement in athletics and rugby across generations of his own family in Auckland.
Semi’s personal and sporting philosophy is to raise athletes and rugby players young by passing on his knowledge and skills to his nephew Douglas and grandson Rewi with the idea that Douglas will mentor younger family members in their pursuit for high achievement in sport. The age and achievement difference between 29 year old All Black Uncle Douglas and his 9 year old nephew Rewi is no barrier to participation and success. Thus, by training together with Semi as a family unit Rewi is afforded the opportunity to learn by doing, that is, he listens to and does what his Granddad instructs by copying his Uncle Douglas.
A family that works together learns together, and also becomes aware of inter-generation connectedness and difference. By this, it has always been Semi’s intention that younger family members exceed his achievement in sport by investing in their opportunity to become professional rugby players. This legacy of high achievement in sport is what connects and sustains generations of male family in Auckland, a legacy that builds a culture of improvement with every generation from a migrant Tongan/Kolonga Uncle to his Pakeha/New Zealand-born Tongan nephew to a Maori/New Zealand-born Tongan grandson/nephew. Although Semi’s life experience as a Tongan migrant to New Zealand is different from his New Zealand-born nephew and grandson he passes on an inter-generation understanding that the way he does things – the way he thinks, communicates and works at training – is unique and reflects the place where he was born and raised, Kolonga ‘i Tongatapu.
Sustainable role models for the young generation
Photograph 4: Douglas carefully observes Rewi’s technique at sprint drills offering positive encouragement and advice during breaks on how to sustain consistent improvement throughout drill repetition.
Negativity toward Pacific Island players has developed most alarmingly in the player nursery of secondary schoolboy rugby. Pacific Islanders’ dominance and Pakeha nervousness about their influence in rugby (at least in the Auckland region), start here. … In Auckland secondary schoolboy rugby, the size of Pacific Island players is driving non-Pacific Island players of similar age away from the sport. Smaller white players are not willing to compete with their Pacific Islander age-mates who seem to be more physically developed. This changes the social dynamics around the game, in school playgrounds and in the wider community. … If rugby is now dominated by Pacific Islanders at schoolboy level, then the social status associated with the sport is no longer the preserve of white males. (Teaiwa & Mallon 2005, p. 214).
Rugby creates a social site for Pacific boys and men to acquire economic mobility and acceptance in New Zealand as a minority population. Teaiwa and Mallon observed the popularity of rugby among Pacific people in Auckland has led to social change in New Zealand’s national sport where it is believed the game has become dominated by Pacific players. At professional and All Black level this is not the reality as Pakeha and Maori players construe the majority players. The same factor applies to rugby league in New Zealand at professional and Kiwis level where Pakeha and Maori players constitute the greater number.
Pacific players are restricted in making a sustainable transition from secondary schoolboy rugby to professional rugby. Structural confines are shaped by constrained financial status, limited access to personal trainers and coaches for role models and performance enhancement, and marginal knowledge of professional rugby networks and high profile agents and managers. Professional rugby is a high performance industry where access to opportunity is structurally defined by access to finances and effective role models; successful self-management and self-marketing of one’s career means having access to key stake-holders in the rugby industry.
Douglas Howlett is aware of the socio-economic constraints that hamper Pacific youth development in professional sport. His social conscience motivated the creation of the Douglas Howlett Sports Foundation. The political agenda was to utilise his professional networks to provide disadvantaged youth with avenues for paying club fees and acquiring sports gear. In addition to his sports foundation, Douglas is a benefactor to charity. On many occasions he has donated personal All Black gear for auction, the proceeds being used by non-government organisations for disabled people and groups affected by disadvantage. Secondary schoolboy and club rugby fundraisers in Auckland have also profited from Douglas’s gifting of personalised gear for auction.
For ten years Douglas Howlett has benefited from participation and success in the New Zealand rugby industry always committed to giving back to community development projects that help disadvantaged youth through sport. In respect to raising sustainable role models across generations of male family what will happen with his exit to Cork County Eire, another world from Auckland New Zealand? Perhaps his nephew Rewi provides an answer.
“When Uncle Doug comes back from overseas I’ll probably be big but he’ll still be my Uncle and we’ll still train together because that’s how we do it in my family.” (Rewi Maniapoto Amoamo 2007).
From village to New Zealand to England and beyond
Photograph 5: Lisiate Fa’aoso in Auckland New Zealand en route to Doncaster Rugby Football Club in South Yorkshire England. A transnational rugby career has meant that in 2007 Lisiate worked three rugby contracts across three nations – Manawatu Rugby Union in New Zealand’s national provincial Air New Zealand Cup, Tonga Rugby Union in the Rugby World Cup and Doncaster Rugby Football Club.
Internationally, the game has ambitions to grow and New Zealand rugby benefits from the Pacific Island player pool not only in Auckland but also in the wider Pacific. The 2004 combined Pacific Islanders (Samoa, Tonga, Fiji) team and issues of player trafficking are beyond the scope of this article. Suffice to say that any magnanimous gesture from the New Zealand and international governing bodies toward Pacific Island players in New Zealand rugby is in stark contrast to their ambivalent attitude towards the development of rugby in the wider Pacific. (Teaiwa & Mallon 2005, p. 218).
Imported players from Pacific Island national teams are by no means guaranteed job security in their professional rugby careers overseas. It is common for rugby players from Samoa, Tonga and Fiji to exist in their host nations on work visas sponsored by professional clubs migrating across rugby nations in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Japan, Europe and the British Isles making careers from short-term contracts. This is the stark reality of how the global rugby industry impacts on players from the Pacific Islands, their lives and livelihoods. Pacific Island passport stamped temporary work visa – players being expendable with club tenure subject to performance, injury and age, that is, a player’s lifespan in professional rugby in which ten years is considered a long working life and anything more, a bonus.
It is also myth that imported rugby players from Pacific Island national teams are flooded with big contract offers from all over the world and rolling in money. Like professional immigrants in a host nation, Pacific Island rugby players adapt to a foreign living environment where a foreign language is the dominant language. They use their network of family and friends to get established and familiar with where they are. And, they work hard to integrate into the workplace and make sense of how it works.
This is not to say opportunity for career advancement in professional rugby does not exist. Rather, it explains that access to opportunity is gate-kept by the industry’s guardians. Strategic gate-keeping makes rights of entry different for an immigrant. After two-years contracted to Manawatu Rugby Union in New Zealand’s Air New Zealand Cup, Lisiate Fa’aoso, imported Tonga national lock is a seasoned expert. His contract player experience has given him in-depth knowledge of how the global rugby industry operates.
Lisiate understands to work transnationally, that is, to play contract rugby for England and New Zealand seasons consecutively in one-year is the way to achieve the best outcome for his career and family in Tonga. His personal philosophy is rugby players only have a short working life in which to achieve their goals. He therefore decided to maximise his player potential by contracting to England and New Zealand professional clubs to gain greater rugby experience across nations and improve his performance.
With age and experience comes wisdom. At 24 years old Lisiate has gained wisdom beyond his years from his busiest professional rugby year in 2007, sustaining three contracts across three nations, enduring a heavy workload through injury, and focusing his career sights on acquiring Super 14 professional rugby status by 2009. This is a tall order for a tall man, 6 foot 6.5 inches of lean muscle. However, it takes more than a hard physical exterior to sustain high achievement in rugby. It requires heart and courage. In an interview with Lisiate he showed that integrity, that is, his professional reputation for honesty, discipline and hard work is his combination on and off the field for a successful career, a good rugby player’s life.
Lessons from Lisiate gone global
“I came to New Zealand for rugby after playing two years for Tonga. My first year in New Zealand was hard because I was injured in a game and couldn’t finish the season. I had to work hard to come back and get contracted to Manawatu Rugby Union in the Air New Zealand Cup. I didn’t know how competitive rugby was in New Zealand, how much harder the training was here and my English wasn’t the best coming straight from the village. But, I wanted to play rugby so much I was determined to do good for my rugby. I was so grateful to have the opportunity to make a living from playing rugby that I was willing to do the hard work to get a contract and keep working my way up.”
“The training for overseas professional clubs is much harder than Tonga. It’s more fitness, technical skills and tactical training, and you get coached in English. I think if I had been more prepared, if I had role models in Tonga to teach me what to expect in overseas rugby then that would have helped me a lot before arriving here. Many boys from Tonga arrive here unprepared with little English. They don’t know anything about the clubs they’re going to, what their contract says or what it’s like to live by yourself away from family, away from Tonga. They go from playing for Tonga or first division clubs in Tonga with no knowledge of New Zealand rugby or a rugby player’s life, straight off the plane and into professional clubs.”
“It’s a culture shock when you first get here because there’s so much to learn about nutrition, diet, health and training. If you’re at a club where there’s only a few overseas boys you have to learn rugby fast, learn training fast, learn the language fast, learn to fit in with your squad fast, learn to be independent fast. If you don’t then you’re on the bench and after you’re contract’s up, back to Tonga.”
“My best advice I can give boys from Tonga who want to play contract rugby overseas is be humble, have a good attitude and do the hard work. Make good with every opportunity you have and don’t waste time. A rugby player’s career is short so you want to achieve the most you can with the time you have. You can come back from injury and from the bench but you can’t make yourself younger and go back in time to do things again if you’ve wasted opportunities.”
“Stay focused on your rugby overseas and don’t let anyone or anything stop you from giving your best to rugby. Give everything you have at every game so when you retire and look back on your life your good work will prove you did everything right. Always remember your family in Tonga and the boys back home who want to be where you are. If you do good for rugby overseas then your family in Tonga will benefit and you’ll be a role model for boys from home to follow.”
“When you do good for rugby overseas your reputation helps Tonga rugby because professional clubs judge all Tongan rugby players by what you do, how you behave on and off the field. You have to remember that when you’re playing rugby overseas. You have to understand that people will think highly of all Tongan rugby players if they think highly of you and the way you work, think, talk and behave.”
From village to Auckland 7s to Tonga 7s and beyond
Photograph 6: Vaea Tangitau (second from left) smiles and takes a bow with his Kolonga village rugby team in Auckland, ‘Utu-longo-a’a. An Auckland 7s and Tonga 7s player, Vaea shared his knowledge and helped develop village rugby by playing in the ‘Utu-longo-a’a vs Leimatu’a game at the 2007 Auckland Tongan Rugby Tournament.
Pacific people inhabit a social and cultural space in between the tangata whenua and Pakeha and other immigrant groups in New Zealand, and they have negotiated a complex and shifting set of relationships with other groups and communities. Sometimes the space in between, some state of liminality, can be an anchoring point or a productive site for addressing the instabilities of social and cultural life. (Teaiwa and Mallon 2005, p. 225).
Pacific people, as Teaiwa and Mallon say, exist in the ‘third space’ (Bhabha 1994) of contemporary New Zealand’s social-political fabric. As a minority group of migrant origins in the Pacific Islands, they do not sustain indigenous status to New Zealand like Maori nor do they procure the majority position of Pakeha New Zealanders, that is, New Zealanders descended from British colonial settlers. Pacific people live in between Pakeha and Maori – the identities central to New Zealand’s national makeup, and in respect to other migrant groups, particularly minorities from non-traditional sources of labour.
Teaiwa and Mallon suggest the marginal position Pacific people occupy in New Zealand is the point of difference that unites and creates a shared identity. In Auckland, the 1970s emergence of Pacific rugby teams developed into Pacific rugby tournaments. The 1990s advent of the Auckland Tongan Rugby Tournament has grown into 23 teams competing in 2007. Affiliating to a village, church-based, ex-high school or neighbourhood rugby team expresses pride in being Tongan in New Zealand and in belonging to a specific Tongan identity group.
Although the focus is capacity building grassroots Tongan rugby in Auckland this annual tournament has attracted participation from Tonga and New Zealand provincial capped players. Vaea Tangitau, Auckland 7s and Tonga 7s representative, has contributed knowledge and skills to his village rugby team. For national capped representatives to play grassroots rugby is a generous act considering in Vaea’s situation he co-managed his professional workload training and playing Tonga 7s alongside his commitment to village rugby.
Developing village rugby benefits from role models, that is, players contracted to professional clubs overseas or New Zealand provincial and/or Tonga teams. If current Tonga players like Vaea Tangitau continue to share knowledge and skills at village-level rugby it is likely Kolonga will cultivate its own sustainable development system. Kolonga rugby in Auckland and Tonga may in the long-term produce a sustainable flow of players capable of competing for professional contracts and recruitment to New Zealand provincial and Tonga representative teams.
Vaea’s advice on going global in 7s
“I came here [to New Zealand] through rugby. I knew how hard it is to get up to the top pro-club. You have to train hard, eat the right food and learn more about skills and technique. I started with 15s [rugby] and didn’t go anywhere near the top. All of a sudden Eric Rush picked me to run with the Auckland 7s. Just have a go. You never know. There may be a chance. Right from day one of training I gave it my all. I didn’t leave anything undone.”
“Eric Rush told us whoever comes to training and does the hard yards I’m going to pick for my squad. And I did it! When I made the final 12 players for Auckland 7s I went crazy when I heard the good news and I thought here we go! The door’s open for me so why not? Now I’m rolling from Auckland 7s to Tonga 7s.”
“About the training, it’s harder compared to last year. It’s now fitness training this year and it’s looking pretty good. We compete in heaps of tournaments. Hopefully we can do well because it’s preparation for the big one coming up, IRB 7s. Playing 7s is all about fitness and if you have that man you’re a hero. I tell you that’s me because I love fitness.”
“I want Tonga 7s right up there like Fiji, Samoa, New Zealand. I love 7s now because I can run wider! It’s more exciting. I travel around the world. My goal is get Tonga to the 7s World Cup. I’m also hoping to become contracted to a pro-club. My favourite player is Rodney So’oialo because he played 7s before going to 15s. My advice to Tongan boys is just train hard. Don’t give up! Opportunity will come if you keep training and work hard.”
“I know how hard it is for boys from Tonga coming here for rugby. When I got here man I can’t speak English. I thought my life is not going to end up staying here away from Tonga. Now I move forward and follow the lifestyle here. I meet with heaps of people out there and they tell me I’m not from Kolonga. But I always say I’m from Kolonga! You can tell by the way I do things haha!”
Has village rugby gone global?
Photograph 7: ‘Utu-longo-a’a, Kolonga village rugby team in Auckland after game vs Leimatu’a village in the Auckland Tongan Rugby Tournament 2007 at Ardmore Marist. Lisiate Fa’aoso (third player from left sitting) and Vaea Tangitau juggled their training and pro-rugby commitments to play this game for ‘Utu-longo-a’a.
The negative stereotypes associated with Polynesian players also extend to discipline and rugby tactics. Discipline is still an occasional problem at schoolboy and club level in rugby, and Pacific players have attracted their share of attention. The supposed lack of discipline overlaps with the contemporary perception that Polynesian and Polynesian-dominated teams lack tactical thinking and are difficult to coach in more strategic elements of the game. (Teaiwa and Mallon 2005, p. 214).
The pending question is has village rugby gone global? I say pending because perhaps it is too early in the game to predict the final score. There is no doubt that in New Zealand rugby the contemporary game has been affected by increasing numbers of Pacific players. This is evident, as Teaiwa and Mallon commented, in the ‘negative stereotypes’ which linger and resurface when Pacific players appear to colour the imagined level playing field of professional, club, tournament or secondary schoolboy rugby.
Pacific players are accused of lacking discipline on-and-off the field as well as an absence of tactical and strategic thinking in their approach to the game. Whether such ethnic-specific assumptions are socially constructed about the minority or based on the minority’s perceptions of themselves, one factor emerges. There is unease in New Zealand’s national game about how much influence is tolerable.
How much control over the shape, form and content of New Zealand rugby belongs to the players themselves in respect to the tastes and canons prescribed by rugby authorities? Who are the true custodians of twenty-first century rugby? With rugby becoming professional in 1995 its new gate-keepers are an old blend of boards, unions, franchises and sponsors – a breakdown of corporate power.
Corporate power has globalized the rugby industry generating revenue from professional competitions in which the market place, the hiring and firing of players, confines and defines an individual’s participation and success. Disparity and difference in professional rugby reflects the global economy. Imported players from the Pacific Islands are subject to the constraints of being immigrant workers. By this, they migrate from what are considered developing nations with struggling economies and limited resources to internally grow high standards of professional rugby.
Such historical legacy shapes the arrival and departure of imported Pacific Island players in New Zealand. Their life-span in the game can be co-dependent on transnational value. This entails a player’s market value in British, European and Japanese professional clubs in relation to their ability to work across the globe, sometimes playing two seasons in one year in different rugby nations, as in the case of Lisiate Fa’aoso.
For New Zealanders of Pacific descent who achieve the nation’s highest rugby honour – an All Black cap, the exodus of New Zealand’s professional players to the British and European market has a worrisome impact on quality control at home. Like New Zealand All Blacks before him, Douglas Howlett has elected professional rugby overseas following his retirement from international rugby. However, current All Blacks departing for overseas contracts are caught in a conundrum of possibly missing out on a national cap unless they return to New Zealand professional clubs at the time of All Black selection.
The player migration concerns New Zealand’s rugby industry which is aware that financial constraints experienced by unions and professional clubs produce the underlying tension triggering movement across national borders. New Zealand rugby players too, like their Pacific Island counterparts, seek out greener pastures overseas when income-making opportunities at home are scarce compared to what is offered abroad. Rugby player migration is socially and economically related to the brain drain. This means the best and brightest from New Zealand and the Pacific Islands have traditionally relocated their lives and livelihoods overseas for remuneration of their skills and knowledge as well as career advancement. If village rugby has gone global then let us hope the loyalty of professional players overseas is placed in developing the rugby future of local boys at home.
Glossary
IRB 7s
International Rugby Board 7s
Kiwis
New Zealand Rugby League Team
Maori
Indigenous people of New Zealand
New Zealand-born Tongan
A New Zealander of Tongan descent
Pakeha
New Zealand’s white population of British settler descent
Tangata Whenua
Maori term of reference to indigenous people of New Zealand, literally translated as ‘people of the land.’
References
Bhabha, H. K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Teaiwa, T. & S. Mallon. 2005. Ambivalent Kinships? Pacific People in New Zealand. In New Zealand Identities: Departures and Destinations, edited by J. H. Liu, T. McCreanor, T. McIntosh & T. Teaiwa. Wellington: Victoria University Press.
About the Author
Photograph 8: Teena Joanne Brown Pulu is a PhD in anthropology from the University of Waikato. She is a New Zealander, paternally descended from Kolonga ‘i Tongatapu. Her PhD thesis explored how three generations of Tongan family living in Auckland New Zealand sustain historical and kinship ties to their origin villages in Tonga.
