As CEO of Pacific Rugby Players Welfare, Dan Leo is fighting on behalf of the players and unions of the Pacific Islands. His new documentary film, Oceans Apart, tells the story.
It is fitting that Dan Leo won the last of his thirty-nine caps for Samoa as his team went down fighting against England at Twickenham in the autumn of 2014. Fitting because, in his role as CEO of Pacific Rugby Players Welfare (PRPW), Leo is now entering into battle on behalf of islanders who, like himself, have come to play professional rugby in Europe; work that includes taking on the powerbrokers at the RFU.
On the field Leo was an aggressive, physical loose-forward, powerful and deft with the ball in-hand, intimidating and abrasive in defence. Even on our video call on a bright lockdown morning he is imposing as he speaks engagingly about his work.
“We've been putting together a documentary about all of the issues,” he tells me, referring to the Oceans Apart feature he has been working on for three years with filmmaker Callum Drummond.
A mini-series, available on YouTube, touches on the full story. Part one features Rupeni Caucaunibuca (‘Caucau’), the lightning winger who left his self-sufficient village in Fiji for New Zealand in 2003, unable to speak English and with no support. In part two, Samoan Trevor Leota describes his own difficulties with the lifestyle and wealth he discovered moving to Wasps, and his regret at failing to plan for the future.
But it is the third instalment concerning players’ mental health that tells of how Leo became motivated to act.
“In 2016 I heard the story of Isireli Temo who had taken his own life,” he says of the Fijian who had been playing in France at the time. “That really showed the need to set up our own specialist organisation for these guys.”
Leo also speaks movingly of his work on behalf of international flanker Seoni Vaiamounga. The Tongan was playing semi-professionally in Romania when he suffered kidney failure.
“His contract was cancelled straightaway, and he was on dialysis,” says Leo. “They were trying to kick him out of the country.”
Deportation almost certainly meant he would succumb to his illness. After Leo stepped in, raising money through crowdfunding and helping with his visa application, Vaiamounga was able to stay long enough to receive a transplant.
Matters of life and death are a small part of the PRPW’s work. They now have specialist counsellors, and aim first to create a support network among families.
“Sometimes we find a guy in a village in France and they didn’t know there were another fifteen families [nearby],” says Leo. “Providing that community to people who really thrive on their social connections is important.”
One family might need help to apply for a driving licence, or to understand the Ofsted system to get their kids into a good school. Mainland Europe has its own challenges as many islanders only speak English as their second language. Having spent four years in France, Leo recalls his own French lessons with good humour.
“They put a massive book in front of you and say read that,” he remembers. “It's so difficult.”
On the rugby side, the PRPW helps to negotiate contracts and facilitate dialogue between club and country where even misunderstandings surrounding release for internationals can create headaches. They have a group of accredited agencies with whom they run workshops, but still, some rogue operators can mislead young islanders who are not aware of their own value.
“There is no system where agents have to be accredited by World Rugby,” Leo says, “so it's difficult to know who is out there.”
The pressure to be the best player on the field often means the islanders feel their teammates’ frustrations, and they can quickly lose trust with the whole system.
“Once that trust is gone it is very difficult to get back,” he says.
If the ‘entry point’ is not managed properly, both the clubs and the players lose out. And for Leo, the ‘exit’ is equally important. He was recently in Fiji with Caucau, who gave away most of his money during his career. The PRPW helped him to set up a taxi business, getting a licence and registering the car. Still, Caucau was days late to meet Leo, making all sorts of excuses about building a rope swing to get out of the village after the road flooded.
“You just have to laugh and get on with it,” he says. “In a lot of cases it's what makes the guys such special rugby players, but unfortunately when it comes to everything else in life it’s less helpful.”
Leo is educating players to plan for life after rugby; hard when, coming from a hand-to-mouth culture, many islanders are not used to looking beyond the end of the day. Lots never finished school, and rugby scholarships to New Zealand and Australia are not tied to academic progress like in the UK and US.
“Too many guys have been given rugby scholarships to top schools and only been there to eat their lunch and play rugby,” Leo says.
He wants to engage kids in the entire process, from school through to their career after rugby, and get families to take some of the strain in a culture where children are expected to work at home.
“You're expected to help around the house, with the child-rearing, and maybe get a part-time job,” Leo says. “So, the things we try and have an impact on are not all rugby-related.”
The pressure continues when a player goes abroad; the family assume their boy is already a star, but are unaware of the high cost of living and the range of professional salaries. The money in Europe can be astronomical, but in semi-pro leagues in Spain players might receive just €12,000 a season, and the promise of a job often falls through. Not only does the PRPW hold clubs to account for such promises, they help to manage the expectations from the families: difficult in a hierarchical culture like that of Pacific islands.
“We see guys sending an unrealistic amount of money home,” Leo says. “I’ve visited players with five or six kids and no furniture – absolutely nothing. It is to the detriment of their longevity.”
The PRPW provides them with financial advice, making sure they save to break the day-by-day cycle and provide for their families long-term.
For Leo, though, his work to facilitate the huge economic migration of players from the islands to Europe treats the symptoms of a much deeper problem, the responsibility for which lies with World Rugby, exemplified in autumn internationals like the one in which Leo bowed out.
He is lobbying senior figures to redistribute the wealth and power in the game, and to get bigger nations to understand their obligations. For an autumn Test at Twickenham the England players might receive over £20,000 each, whereas Tongan players were due to get £150 this year. The big nations rarely tour to Samoa where the stadium only holds ten-thousand and the most expensive ticket costs just £10, and the fees are such that it would be financially crippling to host a major team anyway. Talk of a Super Rugby franchise in Fiji came to nothing, and where decisions are based on revenue from fans, three nations with a combined population of 1.5 million will never be able to compete.
“We provide almost 30% of professional players,” he says. “The investment coming back into our unions and competitions needs to reflect the contribution the Pacific islands have made to the game.”
Pressure even mounted on England players in 2017 to donate to the Samoan team. For Leo, putting players in the middle gets the RFU off the hook. He argued for an optional donation of £5 on each ticket that would go to the visiting players, but the idea was rejected. The RFU says it already has charitable arrangements, and that pay is an issue for World Rugby and the island unions. For Leo, they are turning a blind eye.
“At the moment if you want to play professional rugby you have to leave your islands,” he says. “[If we create] a professional club system, guys won't have to come so far abroad and live in tiny villages in France where they don't speak the language.”
It is not only the professional clubs that attract players. If you ever drive along Queens Road, the main route between Suva and Nadi in Fiji, you will pass Namatakula, the village of Australia centre Tevita Kuridrani. The signposts are painted green and gold in honour of their boy, one of dozens that Tonga, Fiji and Samoa have provided to other nations.
Leo wants to see the same pride in players who represent their home nation. He had just been on the phone with Ardie Savea, a flanker of Samoan descent born in New Zealand.
“He'd love to play for Samoa at the next World Cup,” Leo says. “This is a guy in the prime of his All Blacks career who says his heart yearns to play for Samoa.”
Leo feels an update to the eligibility laws to allow veteran players like Savea to represent the nation of their heritage would immediately benefit the islands, inspiring the nations’ kids and bringing in sponsorship. He is still waiting for the promised review from World Rugby.
“If they voted for it, it could help us out straight away,” he says.
Leo did not plan to become a documentary maker and campaigner, but now his work is his beating heart. Oceans Apart was made with no budget, and has been held up by Covid-19, but he is already working on a second film highlighting the cases of islanders who serve in the UK military. He is in talks with Fijian-born England international Joe Cokanasiga, and Taitusi Ratucaucau, the Fijian who served in Afghanistan and Iraq but has relied on Leo’s crowd-funding campaign to pay for brain surgery denied on the NHS.
In matters of life and death, education, politics, and social care, the PRPW are a young organisation at the front of the fight for players from the Pacific nations – players central to the game’s health who occasionally shower the arena with the ‘island magic’ – as well as their families, communities, and the unions they represent.
“We need changes made at the top right through down to the bottom,” Leo says. “We've just got to keep banging the drum. Hopefully, someone somewhere is listening.”
Oceans Apart is out on Tuesday 17 November on Amazon Prime and Vimeo
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Watch the Oceans Apart trailer mini-series here: