Painter, dentist, vet: rugby’s high-flying amateurs
TOKYO: Siua Maile was working as a roofer in Christchurch when he got a call from the Tonga rugby team: they needed a hooker. Three weeks later, he was playing against the All Blacks.
Maile is one of dozens of soldiers, accountants, students and even vets that are not full-time professionals at the Rugby World Cup—harking back to the game’s cherished amateur origins.
Samoan flanker Chris Vui is a painter. Fiji’s number eight Viliame Mata was working as a joiner before being spotted by the country’s sevens coach and winning Olympic gold in 2016. Teammate Mosese Voka is a fireman, while Namibia’s PJ van Lill is a dentist.
The lower-ranked teams are dotted with players who have to earn their crust off the field, with many of them making significant financial sacrifices to feature in Japan—a far cry from the comfortable salaries enjoyed by the richer nations. “I would say 15 to 20 players made themselves unavailable. We can’t pay our players much,” coach Toutai Kefu said, revealing they are paid “about $600 per week” during the tournament. Assistant coach Dan Cron said they discovered Maile via Facebook. “I know that sounds funny, but it’s much what it is,” he told local media in New Zealand. “We had a hooking crisis when we were in Tonga and we had to find one. He met us when we landed at Auckland, but no one knew what he looked like.”
Thrown into the deep end during Tonga’s 92-7 obliteration at the hands of World Champions the All Blacks, the new dad did enough to win a place on the plane to Japan. It’s not just the poor Pacific Island nations that have to make do on a shoestring. During a Japanese national team tour to England, it emerged the amateur players were getting a daily allowance of just $19.
Uruguay fly-half Felipe Berchesi is one of the lucky ones, with a professional contract in France for Dax, but he says that some of his amateur teammates struggle. “You have to be crazy to play rugby in Uruguay. You have to pay to play here. They train in the evenings or morning, after or before work,” Berchesi said.
Match fees allow some of the players to spend more time playing, but many still face a battle to make ends meet, he said. “Our federation is not very rich. We make do with the resources we have,” said Berchesi, with rugby outgunned by football in a country that worships the likes of Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani.
The Namibia team that put up a brave fight against Italy, even taking the lead, have only a few professionals. “We’ve trained in the morning and at night and their recovery sessions have been in their lunch break,” said defence coach Dale Mcintosh.
Mcintosh said some of his players have endured extraordinary conditions in far-flung outposts of the rugby world—morocco, Nigeria, Uganda. “They played on a pitch with electric cables running down the middle. The ref said if it hits the cable, we’ll put down a scrum. I’ve never heard of that. No one has heard of that.”