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Fiji has never struggled to produce rugby players capable of captivating the world. From its famous sevens sides to the Flying Fijians, talent has never been the issue. The bigger challenge has been creating the professional structures around that talent at home. The Fijian Drua's latest coaching appointments suggest something significant is happening.
For much of rugby's professional era, the pathway for an ambitious young Fijian was relatively straightforward.
Get noticed. Get overseas.
France, England, Australia, New Zealand or Japan offered professional contracts, sophisticated coaching, sports science and high-performance environments that simply weren't available to the same extent at home.
Fiji kept producing the talent. Other rugby nations and competitions frequently provided the finishing school. There was, however, one important exception.
Sevens.
For decades, Fiji's participation on the world sevens circuit provided another pathway: an international stage on which players could develop against elite opposition while remaining unmistakably part of Fijian rugby.
The arrival of the Fijian Drua in Super Rugby Pacific in 2022 didn't replace that route.
It added something Fiji had never previously possessed: a permanent, home-based professional XVs environment.
Five seasons later, perhaps something even more important is beginning to happen.
Fiji isn't only developing professional players at home.
It is beginning to develop the people who develop them.
And that is why the Drua's announcement of its coaching and performance structure for the coming Super Rugby Pacific seasons deserves rather more attention than the normal off-season coaching reshuffle.
Head coach Brad Mooar and senior assistant Mike Catt provide considerable international experience, but look further into the new structure and the direction of travel becomes much more interesting.
Ifereimi Rawaqa becomes forwards coach, while Campese Ma'afu takes responsibility for the scrum.
Both are former Flying Fijians.
Rawaqa won 44 Test caps, appeared at the 2003 and 2007 Rugby World Cups and was part of Fiji's victorious 2005 Rugby World Cup Sevens squad.
Ma'afu accumulated 63 caps, played at three World Cups and spent his professional career absorbing rugby cultures across Australia, Wales, England and France, including spells with Cardiff Blues, Nottingham, Provence Rugby, Northampton Saints and Leicester Tigers.
Once upon a time, much of that accumulated knowledge might have remained overseas when their playing careers ended.
Now it is coming home.
That might prove one of the Drua project's most valuable consequences.
For decades Fiji exported rugby talent. The Drua increasingly provides an opportunity for Fiji to bring home the knowledge that talent acquired.
Rawaqa's journey is perhaps the clearest evidence that something more substantial is being constructed.
He began coaching Lautoka Under-20s in 2013 before progressing to the senior side. His subsequent CV includes Fiji Warriors, Fijian Latui, Fiji Under-20s and the Drua itself, where he joined in 2023.
He has helped recruit and manage players within the Drua development pathway and was instrumental in establishing what became Drua Next Gen.
This isn't simply an ex-international being parachuted into a prominent job because of his playing reputation.
It resembles a coaching pathway.
And Rawaqa provided perhaps the most important thought in the entire Drua announcement.
He described his opportunity to coach at this level not so much as an achievement, but a responsibility — one which might demonstrate to other talented local coaches that there is a route for them too.
That is the bigger story.
Any discussion of Fijian rugby pathways, however, has to acknowledge something Fiji was doing extremely successfully long before the Drua existed.
Sevens.
The World Sevens Series gave generations of Fijian players regular exposure to international competition, travel and high-pressure rugby.
For some, sevens was the pinnacle.
For others, it became an extraordinary finishing school for XVs.
And perhaps no period demonstrates the wider possibilities of that environment better than the Ben Ryan era.
The Englishman took charge of Fiji Sevens in 2013 after six years coaching England and inherited some of the most naturally gifted rugby players on earth.
What followed was remarkable.
Ryan's Fiji won successive World Series titles before arriving at the Rio Olympics in 2016 and producing one of the defining moments in the country's sporting history: Fiji's first Olympic medal and it was gold.
They demolished Great Britain 43-7 in the final.
Yet Ryan's importance to Fiji wasn't simply about teaching brilliant rugby players how to win a tournament.
It was about what happened around them. He introduced greater structure around nutrition, fitness, physical loading, discipline, preparation and tactics. Years later, Ryan described how players quickly embraced changes once they could see the improvement those changes made to their energy and performance.
In other words, Fiji Sevens demonstrated something enormously important. Take exceptional Fijian rugby talent, place sophisticated high-performance thinking around it without removing its Fijian identity, and extraordinary things can happen.
Ryan's subsequent career makes that story even more interesting; he is now Director of Elite Performance at Premier League club Brentford, responsible for helping improve performance across players and staff. Brentford specifically cited his experience of achieving elite performance across different sports when appointing him in 2022.
That gives us an intriguing connection between Fiji's past and what the Drua is attempting today.
Fiji Sevens demonstrated the high-performance concept. The Drua is now embedding it much more broadly into Fijian rugby.
The pathways don't have to compete; players can move between them.
The Drua's 2025 squad, for example, contained three players who had won Olympic sevens silver in Paris, while the club has previously recruited Sevens World Cup winner Elia Canakaivata into its XVs programme.
Fijian rugby increasingly resembles a network rather than a single ladder.
Schools and village rugby feed domestic and provincial competition. Fiji Under-20s, the Warriors and Latui provide further opportunities. Sevens offers an international route. Drua development provides another. Super Rugby sits above it, with the Flying Fijians ultimately benefiting from all of them.
That is a considerably healthier ecosystem than simply waiting for an overseas club to discover the next Fijian teenager.
When World Rugby supported the Drua's admission to Super Rugby Pacific, the structural problem it was attempting to address was clear.
Fiji possessed the raw material but lacked a permanent professional XVs environment sitting between its domestic game and Test rugby.
World Rugby later described the Drua as filling that missing gap: previously the pathway ran through U20s and the Warriors before a player either remained in domestic competition or went overseas.
Drua suddenly allowed around 40 players to "live and breathe rugby professionally" at home and that isn't theoretical anymore.
One recent Drua development signing was specifically highlighted as a player who had attracted interest from overseas clubs and another code but chose to remain in Fiji because he could see a pathway from U18 rugby through the Drua and eventually towards the Flying Fijians.
Development players are salaried, train alongside the Super Rugby squad and can continue playing provincial rugby and that is precisely the sort of choice which barely existed a generation ago.
The pathway is also becoming increasingly connected with Fiji's domestic game. Fiji Rugby CEO Koli Sewabu described the structure earlier this year as running from grassroots and the Skipper Cup, through the Drua and ultimately to the Flying Fijians.
The evidence can be seen at senior international level too.
For the 2025 Pacific Nations Cup, four Drua players received maiden Flying Fijians call-ups and joined another 20 Drua players in the 30-man national squad.
The player pathway is working.
Now comes another question.
Who develops the developers?
Rugby has spent years discussing Pacific Island player pathways.
Perhaps we haven't talked enough about coach pathways.
If young Fijians are to access elite coaching without necessarily leaving Fiji, then ultimately Fiji needs people capable of delivering that coaching and that makes Ma'afu's appointment particularly interesting.
Here is a man who has packed down for Fiji at three World Cups and played professional rugby across four countries.
He has already begun transferring that accumulated knowledge into coaching, most recently working with Fiji's Under-20 programme during its 2026 World Rugby U20 Championship campaign.
Now he becomes the Drua scrum coach.
Think about what that represents.
A young Fijian prop can progress through the national age-grade structure and arrive in the country's professional franchise to be coached by someone who has experienced international front-row rugby and several different professional rugby cultures.
That expertise now exists inside Fiji's professional system.
There is an important qualification.
Building Fijian expertise doesn't mean constructing a closed Fijian system.
The Drua appointments suggest something rather more sophisticated.
Alando Soakai arrives as defence coach with experience spanning New Zealand, Japan and Super Rugby Pacific.
The former Highlanders loose forward led Wellington to an NPC title in his first season as head coach in 2024 before subsequently working with Moana Pasifika.
Before that came more than a decade with Kubota Spears in Japan as a player and coach, including being part of the coaching structure which helped deliver the club's maiden Japan Rugby League One championship.
Above him sit Mooar and Catt, bringing extensive international experience.
So this isn't about excluding outside expertise.
It is about bringing that expertise into Fiji, placing emerging Fijian coaches alongside it and creating the conditions in which knowledge can be transferred.
That distinction matters.
A Drua dependent indefinitely upon imported coaches would solve only part of the problem.
A Drua determined to employ only Fijians could restrict access to ideas developed elsewhere.
The potentially transformative model lies between the two:
bring world-class knowledge into Fiji, develop Fijians alongside it and ultimately create more Fijian coaches capable of leading at the highest level.
Ben Ryan's experience suggests just how powerful that combination can be.
There is another aspect of the announcement which could easily disappear beneath the recognisable rugby names.
It shouldn't.
Dr Dale Thomas joins the structure in clinical and performance psychology, while Luke Vasu heads athletic performance.
Vasu's story is particularly instructive.
He trialled for Fiji Under-20s around a decade ago before pursuing academic qualifications in sports science and building a career in high performance.
Now he returns to work within Fiji's professional franchise. Again, that is what a functioning rugby ecosystem looks like.
Not everybody who contributes to Fiji becoming a stronger rugby nation needs to wear the number seven, nine or ten jersey.
Elite rugby requires physiotherapists, analysts, psychologists, strength and conditioning specialists, doctors, coaches, administrators and development personnel.
A sustainable Fijian rugby system needs pathways for them too.
A mature rugby nation isn't simply fifteen very good players.
It is the system surrounding them.
There is a danger in telling this story of portraying the Drua experiment as an uninterrupted success.
It hasn't been.
Professional sport ultimately demands results. Drua supporters aren't filling stadiums merely to observe a development programme.
The franchise has to compete and it has to win.
But perhaps the Drua's success needs to be measured against more than its position in the Super Rugby Pacific table; dare we say KPI's [Key Performance Indictors]
How many professional-standard players are being produced?
How many progress to the Flying Fijians?
How many teenagers can now develop at home rather than feeling compelled to leave at the earliest opportunity?
How many players can move between sevens and XVs?
How many former internationals return with knowledge accumulated overseas?
How many Fijian coaches are gaining elite experience?
How many sports scientists and high-performance specialists are being developed?
Those are returns on the investment too.
The timing is fascinating.
The Rugby World Cup arrives in Australia next year.
The current Drua generation can therefore have a direct influence on Fiji's prospects in 2027.
But perhaps 2027 isn't the most interesting destination.
Look towards 2031 and beyond.
Fiji could have a generation of internationals who haven't needed to leave home at 17 or 18 simply to experience professional rugby development.
Some will still travel overseas. They should.
Others will emerge through sevens.
Some will progress through Fiji's provincial game and the increasingly connected domestic pathway.
And some will develop through the Drua.
Alongside them could be a generation of Fijian coaches whose own professional education has taken place within Super Rugby.
Behind those coaches could sit Fijian sports scientists, analysts, medical professionals and high-performance specialists.
That begins to look less like a rugby team and more like national sporting infrastructure.
World rugby has spent years debating how to make the Pacific Islands stronger without simply extracting their greatest resource — their players.
There are no simple solutions.
The financial gravitational pull of France, England and Japan isn't disappearing.
Nor should anyone suggest Fijian players shouldn't travel. Playing overseas has transformed countless lives and enriched competitions across the world.
The objective shouldn't be to stop Fijians leaving.
It should be to ensure that leaving isn't the only credible route towards professional rugby.
Sevens provided one alternative and became one of the great success stories of international sport.
The Drua now provides another.
And increasingly it offers another possibility: those who do travel can eventually return, bringing experience with them.
That makes the appointments of Rawaqa and Ma'afu symbolic.
They accumulated knowledge through international rugby and are now in positions to pass it to another generation.
Perhaps one of those players eventually becomes a coach.
Perhaps one of today's academy coaches eventually leads the Drua.
Perhaps one eventually leads Fiji and perhaps the next Ben Ryan arrives in Fiji, contributes his own ideas and leaves having learned just as much from Fijian rugby as Fijian rugby learned from him.
That is how genuine high-performance cultures develop.
Fiji has never needed anybody to teach it how to produce extraordinary rugby players.
What it has needed is the infrastructure that allows more of those players and increasingly the people surrounding them, to fulfil their potential within Fiji.
Sevens began demonstrating what was possible long before the Drua existed.
Now the professional XVs game is building alongside it.
Five years into the Fijian Drua experiment, that may prove its greatest contribution to Fiji and one of its most important contributions to world rugby.
The Drua are helping Fiji build a rugby system of its own.