The All Blacks travel first class, stay in the best hotels, have all kinds of physical trainers and psychological advisors, receive magnificent salaries and have the obligation to win. Playing for the Tongan Sea Eagles is a very different experience. The federation lacks money, they sleep in boarding houses, they eat what they can without further dietary considerations, they challenge rivals with a dance called sipi tau instead of the haka, their salaries are ridiculous and succeeding from time to time is enough. The important thing, really, nothing clichés, is to participate.
No one knows the difference as well as Charles Piutau, Tonga’s full back at the World Championships held in France, because he was an all black (seventeen times between 2013 and 2015) and is now a sea eagle. After losing his place in the New Zealand team, where the competition is enormous because players of the highest level constantly emerge, he took refuge in the rule that allows a professional to change his team and move to another of a country for which he also has nationality, once three years have passed since its last appearance with the old colors.
“With the All Blacks I played exclusively to win, it was my dream, with Tonga (just over one hundred thousand inhabitants) I play for my parents, my family and my friends, for tradition and history,” says Piutau, whose squad has received a beating at the hands of Ireland in its World Cup debut (59-16), has its next match on Sunday against Scotland, and is in a “group of death” also made up of Romania and the powerful South Africa. Perhaps his consolation is that New Zealand has not started well either, beating Namibia but losing the opening match, unmitigated, to the French hosts.
Piutau (31 years old) was born in New Zealand and grew up in the suburbs of Auckland, where his father was an Uber driver and a church pastor. He is one of ten siblings (the youngest), of which the first five were boys and the next five were girls. He trained at the prestigious Wesley College, a factory producing all blacks, and, after starting his career with the Auckland Blues, he went to the British Isles, following in the footsteps of his older brother Siale, who told him that the weather was bad. and the food was even worse, but they paid good salaries and you could survive. He has played for Wasps, Ulster, and currently plays for Bristol Bears in the Gallagher Premiership. After the World Cup he plans to change scene and go to Japan with a good contract.
Piutau is not the only sea eagle to wear the Tonga shirt after being capped by another country. Adam Coleman, a native of Tasmania, played 38 times for the Australian Wallabies, while Malakai Fekitoa, Vaea Fifita and Augustine Pulu tried their luck with the All Blacks. Some of the best players in history have had Tongan genes: Jonah Lomu, George Smith, Doug Howlett, Taulupe Faletau, the Vunipola brothers (of the English team), Viliami (Willie) Ofahenague… But the poverty of the archipelago, even Compared to other countries in the South Pacific such as Fiji and Samoa, it makes all those who stand out as young players with the oval ball emigrate at the first opportunity to Australia and New Zealand, and later to Europe.
“The Pacific Ocean is my swimming pool,” says Charles Piutau. For the moment it has to settle for the Atlantic. But in Japan, if he does indeed resume his career there as he intends, he will have it right around the corner again.
