Mission complete for Ben Ryan as Fiji fulfil Olympic Dream
Fiji’s journey to Olympic gold is sporting proof that sometimes a cocktail of brilliant skill and coaching are the only two ingredients needed to become the best team in the world as they showed in their dismantling of Great Britain in the final.
There will be scenes of absolute unrivalled joy and bedlam back in Fiji as they come to terms with what their heroes have achieved here in Brazil. While the final was played on Thursday evening here in Rio, it was late Friday morning in Suva as the country stopped to watch them win their gold. Supporters flocked to the national stadium to watch it on the big screen.
Theirs is a tale of rugby-mad country who have lived up to their potential under the guidance of Englishman Ben Ryan.
For an island that had never won an Olympic medal, this is uncharted territory. Their population of 880,000 now have a group of 12 heroes who have dominated the world stage. Ryan, who hails from Brentford in London and coached England sevens, will now be the most famous man in Fiji.
His stock was already in the A-List grade before the Olympics, he’d already had a pop song written in his honour and children named after him back in Fiji; shopping trips for Ryan were impossible as he’d be stopped over 200 times a day for photographs. Now he is expecting a light blue passport and a strip of land to be given to him. Anonymity in that part of the world is a thing of the past.
He has done a masterful job with Fiji. When he arrived there back in 2013, he went a number of months without payment and found a group of players who needed guidance. He found, to his shock, he was fitter than them and had to teach his squad valuable life lessons, such as taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi in hotels on the Sevens Series and staying up all night on Facebook was not conducive to producing the goods on the field.
Then there was the financial side: Ryan went unpaid for a number of months as the union was facing one of the hardest financial periods in their history. When petrol ran out on the team bus, it was Ryan who was footing the bill.
But as the finances stabilised and the players fitness improved, they produced the goods on the sevens circuit winning the series in 2015 and 2016.
Under the guidance of Ryan they have fulfilled their potential but the beauty of this team is their vastly different circumstances. Josua Tuisova is now playing for three-time European Cup winners Toulon. And then there’s Jerry Tuwai. He is from a settlement and winning the World Sevens series in 2015 and 2016 meant he could afford a generator to get electricity and then running water. It was life-changing.
On the field, they played the most beautiful rugby. The Brazilian locals embraced them with chants of ‘Go Fiji, Go’ — a slogan stitched on the back of the watching Fijian prime ministers Frank Bainimarama’s t-shirt — ringing out from the stands as they watched Fiji beat Japan in the semifinals.
Each of their four tries in their 20-5 victory over the hugely impressive Japan were things of beauty. After scores from Vatemo Ravouvou and Tuisova had given them a 10-5 half-time lead, they struck twice in the second-half and taking those two in isolation, you saw the huge expanse of their game plan. Their third came through the most delicious of offloading moves with Jasa Veremalua offloading to Leone Nakarawa who then teed up Semi Kunatani.
Then came their fourth where instead of the Harlem Globetrotters expansive style, it was simple but ruthless. A neat inside ball in midfield, with Japan’s defence scrambling, saw Tuwai sprint in unopposed. They had an unrivalled ability to play expansive all-court rugby and then in the close quarters, switching between the two without a second’s thought.
But that proved to be just the starter for the final where they dismantled Team GB with the most brutal, brilliant halves of rugby we have seen over the last three days. Nakarawa pulled the strings and Fiji ran riot. It was rugby poetry and there you had the wonderful marrying of natural ability and coaching in brilliant samba Technicolor at the Deodoro Stadium. Each try was wonderfully constructed.
For the country, the impact of Olympic gold will be huge. Joe Rodan, the president of the Fiji Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee and a 400 metres runner who competed at Los Angeles in 1984, said back in January that Olympic success could be worth FJD$500m (£161.12m, US$229.7m). He hopes the world will suddenly take notice of their beautiful archipelago in the Pacific Islands as does Ryan.
“As our captain says: ‘Fiji have the beautiful game and we want to show that off’,” Ryan said. “I just want us to showcase sevens to the global audience and I want to showcase Fijian rugby.” They have certainly done that.
Their success has been the crowning glory on the most brilliant of sevens tournaments. Both the men’s and women’s were joys to watch and the passion of players and crowd alike would have impressed newcomers to the sport. In the men’s, the four semifinalists were from Oceania, Asia, Europe and Africa – it was a worldwide occasion.
It has attracted cricket royalty in Sachin Tendulkar, the great New Zealand captain Richie McCaw and Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey; Fiji’s rise to Olympic gold may get the latter’s creative juices flowing – it is a true sporting fairy-tale.
The magnitude of what they have achieved may only hit home for the players when they arrive back at Nadi airport in Fiji as Ryan is well aware. “I’d like a nice, easy trip home from the airport but I’ve got a feeling that’s not going to happen.”
