WHAT GOES ON TOUR… M

Y CONTRACT

came to an end on 1 September 2016, writes former Fiji SevenscoachBen Ryan. Before then there was one more piece of madness to enjoy. Uprising (the team’s training base) is in Serua province. At a meeting of the chiefs, they decided to make me an honorary chief too. My name would be Ratu Peni Raiyani Latianara, my reward three acres of land.

For the ceremony, all the women of the village stood in front of me. I’d been told to expect this, and the etiquette to follow. One of them would be carrying a tabua, a whale’s tooth. I’d have to find it.

They all ran off. Live on television. I had to chase after them. It was somewhere between It’s A Knockout, Benny Hill and a courtship ritual – the women disappearing in a large peloton, some in ginger wigs, me trying to find some of my old 400m hurdles speed endurance to hunt them down, cheering from all around.

I spotted the woman who I thought had the tooth. She was the one in the centre of the peloton, the yellow jersey being protected by her domestiques. With a burst of pace I closed in on her. Like Semi Kunatani charging for the try-line, she stuck out a straight arm and fended me off.

The peloton engulfed me as I finally got hold of her and the tooth, for which I had to get a permit from the government to take it off the island. A great mass of laughing women, wigs slipping over their eyes, whale tooth held triumphantly to the skies. It would not have worked at Twickenham.

From Sevens Heaven, pubby Weidenfeld&Nicholson,RRP£20.