‘Brawn drain’ guts Pacific
While government departments, sporting bodies such as the Fiji Rugby Union, and NGO groups such as the Pacific Island Players Association work tirelessly to enable the development and protection of Pacific Island rugby, World Rugby, it seems, feels differently.
It appears that the lure of money far outweighs the human face of rugby – and not just for the Pacific.
Why is this important? The value of rugby to the Pacific Islands cannot be underestimated.
In 2015 work undertaken by Massey University, researchers found Pacific athletes send home a conservative estimate of $21.7 million a year, which constitutes 5 per cent of all remittances.
Per capita, Pacific athletes remit between 6.8 and 13.6 times more than the average migrant. These remittances make a real difference to people’s lives.
Rugby-generated remittances better enable families to meet immediate consumption needs and wants. Material wellbeing is greatly improved through having access to better and more goods, like regular protein in their diets, access to amenities, such as regular power and access to better water supplies, or increased ownership of house products – a fridge or washing machine. This reduces workloads, particularly for women.
The ability to pay for healthcare and medicine makes an obvious difference to people’s lives. Families are able to protect themselves against potential hardships. Siblings stay in school longer and there are clear examples of families relocating from outer islands for the purpose of attending secondary school.
It is not uncommon for families to set up small businesses, with much work under way to improve financial literacy.
However, people should have a choice in the matter, in that given the talent of, for example, 9thranked Fiji, opportunities to generate a livelihood while playing for their home country can also be realised.
World Rugby’s proposal looks to place Pacific Island rugby at the global margins, but this doesn’t preclude continuation of rugby migration and ongoing remittance sending. In fact, it promotes it.
But when the only option becomes club over country, it increases the risk of stifling development of the game at the national level and all that goes with it. Indirectly, it makes it that much harder for Pacific players looking to progress, especially when the only pathway to participate is to leave home.
There is already plenty of criticism surrounding the ‘‘muscle trade’’, ‘‘brawn drain’’ and the breeching of human and labour rights of various Pacific Island sport migrants. Thus, the calls to out unscrupulous agents and upskill athletes and families about contract negotiations and financial literacy, alongside managing demands from families, are rightly placed.
Yet when athletes have no choice but to follow the rugby dream by leaving home, this increases their vulnerability – especially of younger players, some just 14, who are poor and already living life on the margins. We often hear success stories of Pacific Island rugby, but there are also many lessthan-successful stories where, due to following the overseas rugby dream, the welfare, cultural needs and rights of rugby athletes have been seriously undermined with dire consequences.
This drift north of World Rugby ‘‘power plays’’ from the dominant South Pacific to the dormant northern hemisphere is something that ex-all Black Wayne Smith also raised concerns about. In a presentation, during the 2017 British and Irish Lions series, recorded for a World in Union Rugby conference, hosted by Massey University, Smith says: ‘‘There are some major challenges … safety, managing player workloads … huge amount of travel … along with minimising the talent drain etc … Certainly in the southern hemisphere, particularly the [Pacific] Islands, there is a talent drift to the northern hemisphere.
‘‘Whilst that might be good for the owners of clubs up in Europe, I don’t think it is good for the game. The answer to me seems to be play less games, for greater amount of dollars – easier said than done. But that can’t happen without the involvement of World Rugby… along with revenue sharing. It is every major [rugby] power’s job to fund the global game. We are all in this together.
‘‘Rugby can’t afford for the rich to get rich and the poor to get poorer… You look at developing countries where 99 per cent of the wealth is with 1 per cent of the population and those countries are characterised by poverty, starvation, deprivation. We don’t want rugby to become like that… Developing rugby in wider Europe, the African continent, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific Islands is critical. Any worldwide competition needs to ensure there are aspirational pathways for these teams to be promoted and play against the tier one teams.’’
With sport premised on core values such as fairness in competition, transparency with rules and, in team sport, behaving with unity, this is a timely reminder about the human face of rugby, especially as it relates to our Pacific neighbours.
Dr Rochelle Stewart-withers is a senior lecturer in development studies in the School of People, Environment and Planning, and Jeremy Hapeta is a lecturer in the School of Sport, Exercise and Nutrition, at Massey University.