Tragic end to Tongan Rugby Tour

Mana (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 4, 18 August 1977, Page 8

Tragic end to Tongan Rugby Tour

The Tongan Rugby Team arrived in Tonga last week to a half-hearted welcome as four players and the manager, P. Vivili stayed in Fiji awaiting a decision over an incident whereby a Fijian was beaten, and later died in hospital. The first game the tourists had in Fiji at the start of the tour, began with spectators, numbering 500, swamping onto the field of play assaulting the Tongans. The King of Tonga, Taufa'ahau Tupou relayed his concern through the Tongan Rugby Union informing the manager of the tourists in Fiji to assess whether to continue or call the tour off. The manager then decided that the incident of their first game in Fiji did not indicate that the tour be called off, as this sort of incident might never occur again.

Three games had to be cancelled as the venues for them, might have started further outbursts from the crowd as previously happened in Suva. But during the last Test between these two great rugby playing nations of the South Pacific, four Tongan players retired from play resulting in what the Tongan Rugby Union describes as “dirty tactics that was a feature of the Fijian coach and

the Fijian players who physically tackled the Tongans out of the game”. One such incident was the kicking of the Tongan flanker by the Fijian winger on the head, resulting in the flanker being unconscious for twenty hours in hospital before gaining his memory. The President of the Tongan Rugby Union, Mr Nomani Vaka, told the Tongan Press that as he was on a return trip from overseas he decided to see the last game of the Tongans in Fiji. He describes is as “barbaric and physically frightening in terms of modemsportsmanship that threads the future of rugby of the Pacific nations. He also alleged to say that the Fijian Rugby Union, after, the Test, censored all overseas films of the game eliminating out all scenes where Tongans were being late tackled, kicked and a duration of five minutes where an all-out fight by the two teams that started by the captain of the Fijian team, Bosco. The four Tongans that remain in Fiji await a decision from the Justice and Police Departments on charges that relate to the death of the Fijian in an incident outside the Hotel where the Tongans were staying. Two of these Tongans are Police Officers in Tonga,

and the Manager is Super intendant of the Tongan Police Force. The death penalty is still a sentence in Fiji for serious crimes like murders and manslaughter. The last occasion where hanging was the sentence for offenders in Fiji was in the 1940’sand in Tonga it happened last in 1945. The Fijian Rugby team tours Tonga next year, before the Tongans visit New Zealand. Then the New Zealand Maori Rugby Team again visits these Pacific Island countries in 1979.