Pacific Rugby League Pioneers

Sean Fagan of RL1908.com

Few elite rugby league clubs of today are without players from the Pacific. The nature of the game, along with heavy migration trends away from the Pacific islands to the major cities of Australia and New Zealand has led to an ever-growing number involved in playing rugby league.

Long forgotten is the first Hawaiian to play rugby league, Sol Naumu. A former American football College player, Naumu was a half-back in the 1953 "American All-Stars" rugby league team that visited Australia.

An ARL survey in 2005 found that of the 650 junior representative players across Australia that season, 124 were eligible (via birth and/or parents/grandparents rule) to play for New Zealand, 60 for Samoa and 40 for Tonga.

According to a report in The Sydney Morning Herald in early 2009, "Forty per cent of NRL players are of Tongan, Samoan, Fijian, Maori, Cook Island or Indigenous heritage - but over half of the code's elite under-20 league and two-thirds of junior representative players from western Sydney are of Pacific Island descent."

Maori footballers from New Zealand were at the forefront of the code's development in Australasia in 1908 and 1909 - the Maori teams that toured NSW and Queensland in those formative seasons were enthusiastically received by fans across both states, providing much needed gate receipts and popularity for the new code.

Not only did the Maori teams thrill the crowds by their rapid-fire passing and highly speculative throwing about of the football, but their big strapping forwards introduced to the game the unprecedented notion of ball-carriers dropping their shoulders into defenders to bump them off, instead of simply trying to evade tacklers with a run or a kick. “Their men made little effort to dodge opponents,” wrote one reporter. The Aussie tacklers did little more than slightly knock the Maori runners off their stride, only to turn around and see them still careering off downfield.

Peter Moko from the 1908 Maori team became the first to play for an Australian club, turning out Glebe in Sydney in 1909, then moving on to Brisbane for a time. Another member of the 1908 Maori team, Punga (Glen) Pakere, joined North Sydney in 1910. After the 1922 Maori team's tour of Australia, St George signed Brownie Paki to play for the club the following season.

The story of rugby league and Samoans extends back to the 1930s, with the selection of the Mitchell brothers for the New Zealand Kiwis. The sons of an English father and Samoan mother, Alf Mitchell (a winger) played against Australia in 1935, while George Mitchell (a forward) was a member of the ill-fated 1939 Kiwis that arrived in England just as WW2 began. George was also the first known Polynesian to play for the New Zealand Maori team, taking part in their 1937 win over the Australian Kangaroos.

The major migration of Samoans to New Zealand began in the 1950s, and while some became involved with rugby league, their descendants would have a far greater impact. Prominent Samoan family names include Leuluai, Ropati, Solomona, Swann and Vagana. The first Samoan-born footballer to play for an Australian club was Oscar Danielson, a ball-playing prop who joined Newtown in the early 1970s.

It is no surprise to learn that members of the Fijian rugby union teams that visited Australia in the 1950s caught the watchful eye of Sydney rugby league officials. News of the potential rich seam of football talent amongst Fijians soon reached English rugby league clubs, and in 1961 the Rochdale Hornets placed an advert in the Fiji Times, offering local footballers the chance to play professional rugby league in England.

Remarkably, Rochdale’s punt paid off with stunning results, signing Fiji’s two most popular rugby union stars: Orisi Dawai and Josefa “Joe” Levula. Both were big, fast, barn-storming six foot tall wingers. While Dawai had been Fiji captain, the scale of Levula’s adulation by the Fijian public has him ranked today as “the Pele of Fijian sport.”

Levula in particular proved to be a success on and off the field with Rochdale, triggering further signings from amongst Fiji’s top players, including Kia Bose (Wigan), Johnny Nabou (Blackpool), Josefa Saukuru and John Ravitale (both Huddersfield), Ilaitia Ravouvou, Voate Driu and Apisai Toga (all Rochdale).

Toga, who was over 190cm tall and weighed more than 100 kgs wreaked havoc on England’s fields from 1964-67 as a wide-running back-rower. He then moved to the St George club in Sydney, and was soon joined by his brother, Inosi.

Immensely popular with Dragons fans, big “Api” played 103 games for the club between 1968 and 1972. Apisai Toga tragically collapsed and died at a St George training sesssion in early 1973, with tetanus thought to be cause.

Interestingly, almost all of the Fijian converts permanently settled in England when their playing days ended, with the stigma of life-bans imposed by the Fiji RU weighing heavily upon their minds. In the face of such heavy-handed treatment by the FRU, and without the Fijians returning home to share their experiences of playing rugby league, no move was made to start up the 13-man code in the Islands.

The first Tongan rugby league player was Nanumi Halafihi, who played centre three-quarter for Hull FC in the 1960 Challenge Cup Final at Wembley Stadium. Played out in front of a crowd of 80,000, the match is noted in the code’s history books as the first to be attended by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Dane Sorenson, who joined Cronulla in 1977, is thought to be the first footballer of Tongan descent to play in the Sydney club competition.

The most notable Cook Islanders have been the Iro brothers, Tony and Kevin.

Additional information for this article sourced from "Polys Put The Mettle", The Sydney Morning Herald 28/2/09.