When Fiji claimed Olympic gold in rugby sevens, captain Osea Kolinisau became a great of the game. He tells me about the team's journey, as an often dazzling but erratic outfit became Fiji's first ever Olympic medallists.
Fiji captain Osea Kolinisau scored less than a minute into the men’s rugby sevens final at the 2016 Olympics in Rio. But it was not until his team had scored four more tries to lead 29-0 at half-time that he knew they had secured gold; the first Olympic medal in their country’s history.
“After scoring first I knew these guys won't take it lying down,” he remembers. “Fijian boys were always casual, but I demanded the boys didn't drop it.”
Kolinisau – affectionately known as Oscar – was reliably emotional before tournament finals, and had felt this performance coming.
“When they play the national anthem I always cry,” he says. “I think about Fiji – this tiny speck on a world map – and about my family. Now it's an Olympic final and I just think, wow I'm ready to play.”
His team had been dancing in the changing rooms, and Oscar himself was laughing as he ran out onto the field.
“We were so chilled, so relaxed,” he recalls. “Ben said, ‘These boys are so chilled, but I look at their eyes and I see a sparkle: they’re ready to be ruthless.’”
He is referring to Fiji coach, Ben Ryan; the Brit who had taken the job in 2013 with no contract after seeing it advertised on Twitter. Under Ryan and Oscar, Fiji had won the World Series twice, but they knew the Olympics would be the greatest achievement of all. Oscar credits Ryan with pulling the erratic Fijians into the competitive professional sevens era.
“We'd be good in one tournament, but we weren’t consistent, and we weren’t disciplined enough,” he says. “A lot of [opponents] thought the Fiji boys are so undisciplined, so let's just try to rile them up, and a high tackle is always coming up, then you get a player sent off for doing a stupid thing. We said we will change that.”
The changes began in training, where every player was punished with sprints when one made a dangerous tackle. It forced each to take responsibility, and see the effect of their indiscipline on the whole team. One morning, forward Semi Kunatani arrived late – so-called ‘Fiji time’ – and was ordered to stand on the side-line whilst the rest of the squad served his punishment.
“In the game, when you do something stupid it's not you who's going to pay for it, it's your team,” Oscar says. “Semi had to stand there and watch as we dished out [sprints].”
Soon, players could be seen stretching half an hour before sessions began, and high tackles stopped. And the expectations extended into all aspects of their lives in training camp at the Uprising hotel in Pacific Harbour. The resort is beautiful and simple; situated next to a quiet stretch of beach lined with palm trees, with thatched huts and outdoor showers. Training took place on a rugged tract of grass next to the entrance. On Friday afternoon, the players could go home for the weekend.
“We made sure we took out all the bedsheets, the bathroom was left clean, and our training gear was all put in storage,” says Oscar. “Even when you use a toilet, make sure you leave it in a better place than how you found it.”
It was all part of establishing a transparent, honest and trusting team environment where everybody took responsibility, and coach Ryan took the time to understand the culture of the islands he had never visited before taking the job.
“Above all other coaches, he got to know his players personally,” says Oscar. “Ben did the groundwork, travelled to the boys’ villages to meet the parents, to see what's happening.”
The story is told in Ryan’s book, Sevens Heaven; a love letter to the islands and their people. He describes having to get players to chase each other just to motivate them to do sprint training, and how he once found youngster Jerry Tuwai hiding in the bushes to avoid doing fitness. It was in his relationships with players like Tuwai that Oscar showed his powerful leadership.
“Jerry is very humble,” says Oscar. “His is a real underdog story where you want them to do well. When he first came into camp, I came off the field and the boys said Jerry's under the shed. It was dark and he was just sitting there alone.”
Oscar listened to Tuwai as he talked about where he was from, and how rugby was probably keeping him from a life on the wrong side of the law. He convinced Tuwai to come back upstairs to join the team. Once you were in, you were just like anyone else. Tuwai began putting everything into training, and ultimately accepted his Olympic medal in boots with ‘Knife’ and ‘Fork’ etched on the soles; his reminder that rugby meant he and his family were able to eat.
Then there was Masivesi Dukawaqa – “the guy with one eye” – an airport security guard until he was plucked from obscure provincial rugby, who could not operate a mobile phone until Oscar showed him one evening in camp. And when Viliame ‘Big Bill’ Mata was left out of a tournament, even Mata’s father was on the phone to ask how his boy could improve.
“[Ben] did it personally, instead of us finding out from the news, you get it straight from the coach," says Oscar. "He gives out the jersey, and he knows every player’s background.”
The Olympics themselves made for the experience of a lifetime for the squad. Oscar recalls being star struck asking for selfies with Rafa Nadal, despite their phones having been confiscated as soon as they landed in Brazil.
"You can't blame us when we watch these athletes on TV, and now we see them face-to-face," he says. "But Ben would say, ‘Look, Usain Bolt: Olympian, you: Olympian’. He's world class in his discipline, and we are world-class players in rugby.”
This change of mindset was married with the ethic of trust and unity. Every meal, the squad lined up to eat together in the canteen. Oscar could see the contrast with some of their rivals who were scattered around the village enjoying the occasion. They even resisted the free McDonald’s until after they had won.
“We saw it [McDonald’s], and the boys were like, you wait there we’ll see you after the tournament,” he remembers. “Just hold on a few more days.”
Just as in the canteen, they lined up together.
“One athlete was allowed twenty items,” he says. “The first one would order fifteen Big Macs, the next one fifteen McChicken. You just eat, sleep, eat McDonald's again.”
They grew so tired they began sharing it with the security guards, and even took a box of Magnums from the canteen for the cleaners.
“You know, Fijians will be Fijians,” says Oscar. “No matter where they go, the boys want to share what they have.”
During the tournament, though, the team bond had been stressed. Winger Save Rawaca had drifted from the group, once so frustrated he refused to take the field. Injured and acting out, they removed him from the squad.
“I think it just got to Save, the Olympics,” says Oscar. “We were always putting the team first, but Save forgot about it, and he started to play for himself. Those little things could have cost us.”
For Oscar, the 43-7 victory over Great Britain in the final was a match that could not have gone better.
“That's the perfect game of sevens you want to play,” he says. “The only thing I want is to go out and show the world how great Fiji can be. I was happy we were able to do that in the final.”
It was not until the team arrived home that Oscar understood the effect of their achievement. After winning the World Series two years before, the three-hour drive from Nadi airport to the capital, Suva, had taken more than eight. Every village they met, the people would mob the bus, getting the children to block the road and beckon the players off for dancing and a traditional kava ceremony. Knowing the Olympic victory would be even bigger, they would fly across to Suva after a brief stop at Nadi stadium to show off the medals.
“It was a Sunday when we got in, and I see these two old Fijian women coming home from church with their bibles,” he remembers. “When they saw the bus, they got down in the road and started doing press ups in front of us! You know how big this thing is when you see [that].”
The Olympic cycle brought Ryan’s contract, in as much as he had one, to an end, and he was replaced with former Hong Kong coach, Gareth Baber. For Oscar, it was also time to move on.
“He's always said, ‘I'm Ben Ryan outside the field, and having Oscar is like having me inside the field’,” he says. “To me it wasn't the same.”
He hints at tension with the Fiji Rugby Union, but will not be drawn on any of the politics. But perhaps the change of mindset, explicit as he began to feel at home in the Olympic village, is revealed more subtly in how Oscar saw the appointment of a new coach.
“You're talking about Fijians,” he says. “How come they give the number one job in the world, the number one team, to someone who has no experience in the series?”
Baber has won tournaments with Fiji since. But whether Oscar ought to have trusted him or not, the revolution is plain. To him, Fiji were no longer the erratic, undisciplined team he had joined. They were “number one”.
Oscar is now playing in the US, and at 32 is looking ahead to his second career. He wants to move into coaching, and take Fiji to another Olympic sevens title. As expected, he saves the last word for Ryan, the man he respects and admires above all others in the game, and who he wishes to emulate.
“I want others to experience what we experienced that produced a gold medal,” he says. “Fijian coaches could never get Fiji to play the way Fijians play, then this ginger-haired white man comes and he gets that out of the players. He is undoubtedly the best. Ben Ryan set the stage for me.”
Do not be surprised to see Fiji on the Olympic podium again, this time with Oscar as coach, laughing and dancing his way to the top step.
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