Bad for Fiji…Worse for Sri Lanka?

The international rugby fraternity has been all agog with Sri Lanka featuring highly in the exodus of Fiji’s champion sevens players from the Fijian Rugby Union. Only yesterday, the Championship winning captain Setefano Cakau has confirmed his arrival in the Sri Lanka to play domestic club rugby, turning his back on the team that he led a couple of years ago. Similarly Joeli Lutumailagi and Pio Tuwai also have foregone their contracts with the FRU to play club rugby in SL among other national cap players. Only one contracted player remains for coach Ben Ryan to use in the upcoming World Series.

What does this all mean? Are the Fijian players traitors, in the same way many sections of the local media tried to portray Lasith Malinga when he picked Mumbai Indians ahead of his local franchise? No, of course not. They are professionals and if someone pays me double the money to do half the work at a different job, I’d take it too. Fiji is not a rich country. It’s political stability is not great either. And for a sevens team as celebrated as the Fijian one is, the players’ superstar status is not reflected in their pay packets. The average Fijian contracted player makes USD 15,000 for his annual contract. Together with appearance fees, win bonuses and daily allowances, this figure may rise to a maximum of 20 – 25,000 USD. It is reported that the Fijian stars can earn as much as USD 50,000 for a 6 month long club rugby season in Sri Lanka in which the physical and travel demands are nowhere near what is expected on the World Series sevens circuit.

From the Fijian players point of view it’s a no brainer. Coach Ben Ryan of Fiji has said he tried to keep some players, but the FRU just couldn’t match the money being offered by Sri Lankan Clubs.

At USD 50,000 a pop and with usually three or four players in the side, the domestic clubs pay a hefty amount for their foreign players. Assuming that most of the sevens players are on the same pay scale, a club with four foreign recruits are looking at anything between USD 12,000 – 20,000 as their budgetary allocations purely for foreign players. This is anywhere between LKR 15 – 26 million, which is a gigantic amount.

What this also proves is that sponsors are willing to plug money of this magnitude into the game. If one Club gets good foreigners it stands to reason that other Clubs will need to get the same calibre to remain competitive. Whether it’s a reaction to Kandy’s loss to Army or not we don’t know, but Oscar Ouma the devastating Kenyan sevens player is also expected feature this weekend against Havelocks for the upcountry side. Obviously the damage that the big, strong skillful Tuwai did has not gone unnoticed and Kandy have gone for a like replacement. With 8 clubs spending this sort of money, you’re looking at a domestic game worth anywhere between 150 – 200 million rupees purely in the value of their foreign players contracts.

Add to this the cost of foreign coaches, supplementation and local players and the budgets sky rocket. As much as this is great for the game and people would like to see a marauding Fijians running like Gulliver through a horde of Lilliputians it doesn’t really do a lot for the game. Army who couldn’t score a point in the first 40 minutes of rugby completely changed their game with the advent of Tuwai. It was, quite literally, a one man army. And great as this is for Army per se, it doesn’t improve the quality of rugby in Sri Lanka. The local players seem quite happy to sit back, let their foreigners make line breaks and perhaps help them finish.

Ever since the foreign players were reintroduced into the game, the national team’s standard has dropped. While it is true that the fear factor has diminished, does the advent of the individually skilled foreigners helped the development of local players. In this weekend’s games CR and Havelocks were hopelessly inept at line out time. Kandy were also hopeless in the set piece. This fundamental part of the game is suffering because teams are getting away with feeding their Fijians of scrap ball. But at international level, if you can’t win your ball in the scrum and line out, you haven’t got a hope. The other troubling aspect after a mere two weeks is the restart. Nobody seems to be able to catch the ball of a kick off, and once again this skill will be exploited at international level.

With club officials and coaches mainly interested in winning games by any tactical method they choose, it is important for the SLRFU to analyse the long term impact on the game. The initial idea mooted was for the foreign players to be under 23 so that they could qualify on residency and then turn out for the national side. That initiative has not really been followed.

The other travesty is the fact that with budgets of nearly 200 mn rupees invested by sponsors ONLY in foreign players, we need to ask if that is the correct prioritisation of funds. Referees need a huge amount of development and more people need to be encouraged to take the whistle. Some real pay may make it wortwhile for potential referees to brave the abuse that comes with the territory. However, Clubs do not invest in refereeing and this is a short sighted move.

From a glamour perspective it’s great to have these Fijian flyers and the Tongans and New Zealanders in Sri Lanka. But if they are not actually developing the local players then the move will be counter productive. That needs to be judged by the quality and depth of the national side. Better players should make a league better, and the national side will get better as a consequence. But as English football has shown, that is not always the case.