THE LONG WALK TO ENTRY

AFTER BEING SNUBBED BY THE GAME’S ELITE FOR 25 YEARS, A PACIFIC ISLAND SIDE FINALLY LOOKS LIKE IT WILL BE GRANTED A PLACE IN SUPER RUGBY AND THE CONSEQUENCES COULD BE SIGNIFICANT.

- GREGOR PAUL

Whether it was an oversight or a deliberate snub, the decision to not include a Pacific Island team when Super Rugby launched in 1996 is now universally accepted as a giant mistake.

The consequences of non-inclusion have been felt hard in the Island nations of Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. All three have spent the last 25 years close to insolvency, scraping, borrowing, and begging for cash just to pay for kit and accommodation.

All three have felt financial hardship in a way few other countries have. They have operated on next to nothing as they were left on the starting grid when the game went professional.

The curious thing is that all three Island nations had entered the race, were on the line with everyone else, and had every reason to believe they would hear the gun. Why wouldn't they as all three had been part of the amateur Super 10, which was the pre-cursor to the professional Super 12.

Super 10, which ran from 1993 to 1995, included the four top-ranked provincial teams from New Zealand, New South Wales, and Queensland, the three top-ranked South African provinces and the winner of the Pacific Nations Cup played between Fiji, Tonga and Western Samoa as they were then.

The make-up worked. It made sense and fan interest was high. So when Samoa reached the quarter-final of the 1995 World Cup, they fully expected to be part of the negotiations to create a professional version of Super Rugby.

“Why wouldn't we be included?,” asks Samoa's coach from that time, the legendary All Black Bryan Williams. “We had had good results since 1991 and had made the quarter-finals at both the 1991 World Cup and 1995. We had also shown we could compete against the best New Zealand, Australian, and South African provinces.

“I was a strong advocate for inclusion and we expected to be included.”