Laid-back Fijians at Rugby World Cup to have fun

Fiji rugby player Nicky Little in action during Fiji rugby training in 2005. Photo / Dean Purcell

There is always something wonderfully disarming about the Fijians at the World Cup. Quite simply, they march to their own Islander tune and that means we are spared the mind-numbing platitudes trotted out by all of the other teams barring, well, Tonga and Samoa.

Take veteran Nicky Little for instance. Asked how he planned to celebrate his birthday yesterday the former Bath and Bristol No 10 said: "Get on the piss! The boys have been giving me crap all day, it started at six o'clock in the morning with 'happy 38th birthday' and all that stuff. I'm 35, not 38!"

Little, the nephew of former All Blacks centre Walter Little, is enjoying his third World Cup and is Fiji's most capped player after making his debut in 1996 against the Springboks in Pretoria. And "enjoy" is very much the operative word.

Where other teams have their training sessions in fenced-off arenas to keep out the public, media and opposition spies, Little and his teammates could not care less and every session is open to all.

"We don't really like it when it's all closed off. We don't like walls and fences," he said. "We train like this in Fiji where you have to get the balls back from the kids, and sometimes you don't get them back because they have nicked them and we have to delay training until we get some more! That's what we're used to."

And that is why the Fijians will never change the way they play, whether it is a friendly or World Cup knock-out match. They like structure as much as they like fences.

"'Fijian' is the only style we know," he smiles. "We try and put a lid on it sometimes and maybe we win or we don't win, but the boys don't enjoy it and the last 15 years I've been with the team I'd rather see the boys enjoy it."

The Springboks did not enjoy it when they were nearly beaten in the 2007 quarter-finals, and neither did the Wales team that almost beat the Boks last week when Fiji held them to a 16-16 draw in Cardiff last November.

The relaxed thinking is reflected in Little's opinion on the strength of Pool D, the so-called Pool of Death.

"I hear people saying it is the toughest pool. I don't think we've really considered that might be the case. It's not that we don't care, but we don't mind who we play because we're in the World Cup and enjoying our time here. Isn't that great?

"Some people divide teams into minnows and stronger teams, but we don't really see it that way. We treat all opposition the same, and play the same way. We don't change our game," he said.

- Independent