On September 30, Josua Tuisova (29) learned that his son Tito had died after a long illness.
The boy was seven years old.
Even badly injured, Josua Tuisova told himself that there was little he could do, or so we have been told, since the news had caught him in Bordeaux and the child had died in Lautoka, in the Fiji Islands.
Thirty hours of flight and a couple of connections, 20,000 km in total, separate both cities, and the funeral was going to be held two days later, and Tuisova did the math and assumed that, at the funeral, he would arrive very soon, if he arrived at all. So she apologized to Isikeli Ratulevu, his own father, the boy’s grandfather, and put on the white Fijians shirt and jumped onto the green of the Nouveau Stade. The Georgians were waiting for him in their Group C duel of the Rugby World Cup.
Tuisova played a correct match, not as brilliant as the one she had played thirteen days before against the fearsome Australian Wallabies (she had scored a try, she had been declared MVP of the match; the Fijians had knocked down the giant for the first time in 69 years: 22 -15), but his country took the victory (17-12) and, in this way, put a foot and a half in the quarterfinals.
(It would certify it a week later: even though it was surpassed by Portugal, 24-23, Fiji reached the quarterfinals for the third time in its history, after the 1987 and 2007 editions).
–Jos (Josua Tuisova) has respectfully asked not to talk about it (the death of the child), so we will not talk about it, but we will leave it in the private sphere –said Simon Raiwalui, coach of Fiji, although the news became trending topic in rugby circles.
Fiji is a rugby power, but a logistical calamity, a calamity it shares with Tonga or Samoa, two other mysterious wonders of the South Pacific. Rafael Ramos has already written about it on these pages:
“It can be said that in the Pacific Islands there is a problem of corruption, poor administration and political interference in sport (…)”, Ramos told us on January 7, 2018.
The island of Fiji lives off the countryside and tourism, it is poor, the per capita income is around 4,500 euros per year, and it is in danger of climatic extinction, hit by cyclones and melting ice, due to rising seas. In Fiji, rugby is passionate and unstructured, and its specialists, rocky as shot putters, legs like marble columns, and fast as a sprinter, modern Jonah Lomu, choose to emigrate.
They settle in New Zealand, Australia or the United Kingdom, even in France, like Tuisova, who plays for Racing 92 in Paris, and from there they send money to their people.
Rugby in Fiji – as in Tonga and Samoa – thus becomes a religion and also a financial obligation, and its stars, even poorly paid in their destinations, take it tremendously: they care little, or not at all, if Their federations defraud the treasury or mislead budget items. They play out of conviction and pride.
Even so, even settled as they are in the quarterfinals, the Fijians live in a lifeless state. Concentrated in Marseille, the scene of their next match against England (next Sunday at 9 p.m.), they are mourning the death of Tito and also bewildered by their surprising defeat against the Portuguese in their last match.
Under these premises, rugby takes on a new dimension these days: in the presence of the giant, Fijians play, fight and cry.
