Fijians embrace Ryan as their own
Ben Ryan is a hero in his adopted homeland, reports Owen Slot.
PROBABLY the No 1 celebrity in Fiji is an Englishman. He is red-haired and his skin wasn’t made for the sun. But they love him so much that there have been babies named after him and a rock song released about him. He also has his own TV programme; he is asked to judge Miss Fiji; and even though he drives a standard Hyundai, his car is recognised and mobbed if he drives around Suva, the capital. This is Ben Ryan, born in Wimbledon, celebrated in Fiji. Who knows what they will make of him there if he guides Fiji to their first Olympic medal?
From the day that sevens was admitted to the Olympics, it was apparent that Fiji, after 15 Olympic ducks, might finally open their account on the medal table. In fact, Ryan will only really be happy with gold.
Fiji certainly weren’t favourites when he arrived from England three years ago. On his first day, he did fitness testing with the squad he had inherited and the highest score in testing was his own. And he was 42. After their first tournament, he decided to smash them in training with a succession of 100-metre runs up and down their training pitch. After just one, he found Seremaia Tuwai, one of his star players, hiding behind a bush. But they then won their second tournament, in Dubai, and Ryan’s legend — and something of a cultural revolution — began to take root.
Fiji had never had a foreign coach before. They had never, for instance, had anyone to tell the players what to eat. The breakfast buffets at tournament hotels are the worst, Ryan says. In Dubai, he recalls one player piling his plate with eight eggs and eight pains au chocolat. "I said: ‘What are you doing?’ He says, ‘Eggs are good, bread’s good, no?’ ’’ So they were educated to have a lot of colour on their plates. Not just white — rice and pasta, with ketchup. Colours equal fruit and veg. ‘‘Now, they come and show me their plate and ask, ‘Is this all right?’ ’’
They all get it now, though Tuwai is addicted to chocolate. When they are away, he knocks on Ryan’s door and asks him for it. ‘‘I took him to the dentist,’’ Ryan recalls, ‘‘because he needed eight teeth extracted. We sat him in the chair, he got terrified and ran away. Before the next tournament, I said, ‘If you don’t go, you’re not selected’.’’
Initially, Tuwai would often be a no-show at training. ‘‘So I’d drive round to where he lives,’’ Ryan says, ‘‘and he’d be playing volleyball on the roundabout. I’d say, ‘You should be at training’. And he’d say, ‘I didn’t want to’. That’s a world-class player, and he hadn’t made the connection between training and playing.’’
They all get that now too. Ryan has had to buy into the culture he himself set. When he says no drinking after tournaments, he means it, not even a couple of relaxing beers. ‘‘It’s island mentality,’’ he explains. ‘‘If it’s there, it’ll all go.’’
This year, he brought in a breathalyser and on mornings after tournaments, when they were doing pool recovery, he’d pick on three of them. They knew the rules: you test positive, you’re gone. ‘‘Now they know, they laugh,’’ Ryan says. When they see him coming, they say: ‘‘I’ll have a go.’’
Slowly, slowly, they have come to understand what he is bringing to them. He, too, has understood what they were bringing to him.
Yet what Ryan also found was a nation so engrossed in sevens that knowledge and understanding of the game was immense. World series sevens tournaments are played on loop on national television. Saturday night mustwatch television -- is Ryan’s rugby programme when he teaches technique such as the lineout lift.
And it was when disaster struck that Ryan understood what kind of squad he had developed. The cyclone at the end of February killed 44 people and damaged or destroyed 40,000 homes. Two of Ryan’s players had their homes obliterated. It struck in the early hours of a Friday. Their next training camp was the following Tuesday, to prepare for the next tournament on the schedule, in Las Vegas. In the interim, almost all the players had been living without running water or electricity and it had been baking hot. And as the grid was down, no one could communicate.
On the Tuesday, Ryan waited at training to see who would pitch up, and one by one they trooped in. ‘‘They came in like they’d been at war,’’ he recalls. ‘‘Some had walked eight hours to get on to the road to thumb a lift to training.’’ Only one player, one of those whose house had been destroyed, didn’t make it. Ryan recalls: ‘‘We tried to train and they had nothing. So I said, ‘Right, you’re going to bed’.’’
At their training base, there is a hotel with a generator, owned by a rugby-mad fan. So the players slept there. They did nothing for three days but recover. ‘‘We won Vegas at a canter.’’