Razzle dazzle defeat

Barry Rollings
Volume 48, No. 18, October 05, 2006

QUICK STEP: ASRU Man of the Tournament CPL James Hood moves in to effect another tackle on an attacking Fijian player during the final of the Pacific Nations rugby tournament in Canberra. Photo by CPL Rachel Ingram

“RAZZLE dazzle ‘em” proved good but a tad belated advice from the Australian Rugby Choir for the fabulous Fijians in the Pacific Nations Military Rugby Tournament final in Canberra on September 16.

The razzle-dazzle rugby of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) had already swept all before them in the lead-up to the final and continued unabated in their 57-32 triumph against the Australian Services Rugby Union representative side, winner of the other pool.

By accident or design, one of the choir’s songs for half-time entertainment in the main game, “Razzle Dazzle ‘em” epitomised the Fijian’s magical running rugby.

With ball in hand, they attacked quickly from all parts of the field from the breakdowns with improvisation and flair that none could match.

As the song says and the Fijians obligingly complied:
“Give ‘em the old razzle dazzle,
Razzle dazzle ‘em,
Give ‘em an act with lots of flash in it, and the reaction will be passionate,
Give ‘em a show that’s so splendiferous, row after row will crow vociferous.”

Not surprisingly, Fiji had begun the tournament with a 114-0 win against Papua New Guinea – the same day Australia beat French Armed Forces New Caledonia 104-0 – but Fiji followed that up with a somewhat surprising 81-17 triumph over the New Zealand Defence Force.

In the final, the score quickly blew out to 19-3 midway through the first half after two sparkling attacks from 10m inside their own territory, which released the flying winger and Player of the Series, Jona Nareki, on lightning runs to the tryline.

Fiji led 33-11 at half-time but Australia held firm for a long period of the second half.

Then, Fiji’s tries continued to flow – three of them in a four-minute period as they set their seal on the game with a 50-18 lead before a late Aussie rally produced two tries, both converted, to add some respectability to the Australian score.

“There are some big strong lads in there, including six internationals (including rugby sevens reps),” Australian coach CAPT Angus Baker said.

“We had to play a pretty structured game and I thought we did that in patches. I thought our set pieces were very good, our line-out was good and our scrum was good, which we dominated.
“In broken play they beat us a bit at the breakdown. Once you turn over the ball like that, away they go.

“Our aim was to get into them early with our set pieces and get in behind them. We did that for about 10 minutes and then they went away with a couple of quick tries.
“After half-time, they scored several quick tries and then we held them again for a time.”

The team had been assembled for only two weeks from all over Australia, CAPT Baker said. “A lot of guys came back from ops for this and have not played a lot of footy; to come this far is a superb effort.”

The Air Force’s standout players were fullback CPL James Hood and fly-half CPL Ben Jones, until injured.

Fijian coach Thomas Mitchell was surprised by the high scores against Australia and New Zealand.

“Our objective in coming here was to win the tournament,” he said.

“We did it in style but to be truthful we did not expect that.”

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