Niue battle on against all the odds

Roderick Tagelagi is a proud member of the Niue community. Like many of his countrymen, though, he chooses to live and work in New Zealand.He is proud to be Niuean and to have been the nation's rugby coach for a number of years, but is also realistic. He knows that his job requires a constant compromise in order to find a best solution.For the NZI Sevens this weekend Tagelagi's job is to pick and train the best 12 players to represent Niue at the Westpac Stadium, and it is clear that he would love for them all to reside in Niue, which holds the distinction of being the smallest self-governing nation in the world.

With only 1,500 people resident there, though, and by no means all of those rugby players, he is well aware that the numbers stack up against him. In such a position he is forced to broaden his horizons.

Tagelagi: "Divide up 1,500 and you get a small number"

"There's no denying that it is quite hard," said Tagelagi. "We have the local boys back home but we don't have a big player base in Niue because of the population size. When you take the 1,500 people and divide it up and find out how many people actually play you have a small number."There are a few in New Zealand and we're lucky that a number of them are Auckland-based so we can carry on with our training, but otherwise it's too difficult because they're all too spread out."Against this backdrop Niue of course start as overwhelming underdogs at the NZI Sevens in a pool which pits them against three giants of the game in New Zealand, Australia and Wales.Far from shying away from the big stage, though, the opportunity to play against these teams is something that the coach and all of his players hold dear."It means a lot to us because it's exposure for our small country, so coming here is something that we've always tried to do because we don't get to go to a lot of international tournaments."We also get a lot of support from the Wellington crowd, which we always appreciate so the boys are really looking forward to playing here.

"We have a strong relationship with the New Zealanders, a few of the guys know some of the New Zealand side through clubs, but we also share that relationship with the Cook Island boys, with the Samoans so I guess it's something in the Pacific that we are quite close, being from Oceania we tend to build a relationship."

Creating a Culture

With opportunities very limited in Niue in terms of education and jobs, the majority of Niueans choose to live in New Zealand and then find it very hard to go back. The resulting fear is that whole generations will go missing and, with them, Niuean culture. In his own way Tagelagi has taken action to try and prevent this with the rugby team."We started creating a culture in the last few years, since we last came to Wellington. We've had older people come back in and teach a lot of our players traditional songs or about how our families were raised a few years back."We've put a lot of emphasis on our players knowing who they are and where they come from so that when they go out and represent the country it becomes a little bit more meaningful to them."Hopefully the younger generation will go back, I certainly want to go back some time."With international Sevens an increasingly professional enterprise among many of the core teams, Tagelagi makes a point of not judging success in Wellington by results. However, in recent times his sides have threatened to cause upsets. In 2006 they almost beat France in their pool and only just lost out to Scotland (14-12) in the Bowl quarter final and mighty Tonga (21-14) in the semi final of the Shield. With such a track record, no side will take them lightly.

Exposing Niue to the world

"It's a challenge for us to make sure that we come down here and play well, so that we earn the respect of the teams that we play against, that's very important to us, it's important that we expose Niue to the world, show that we are capable of playing some rugby."We don't want to miss out on that chance, and at the same time we know that we have to stand up and perform. There's always a great cameraderie off the field, but on the field we do try and give each other a bit of a nudge and compete well."I suppose it's because we know that it's an opportunity we get, and we know that we don't get often," said Tagelagi."On the day the ball can bounce anywhere, but we want to base everything on our performance and build on that to earn the respect of the teams, and the supporters."