Pacific Warriors

It's a small world.

Everybody knows the saying and here, where we live,

it is true.

Now picture another world

with valleys so deep and dark,

no human will ever set foot upon them.

And mountains so tall they dwarf the himalayas.

It sounds like a fairy tale,

but in fact, it is the greatest wilderness on earth.

How big something is usually depends on comparison.

No need with the pacific ocean.

An ocean so deep,

that only the very highest peaks emerge

to form the tiny pacific islands.

Amongst them, barely visible on a map,

lie Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa.

Though tiny in number, resources, and finance,

the people who live there have adapted their ancient culture

and though fierce in rivalry, they are a brotherhood,

united in pitting themselves

against the giants of our world

every four years at the rugby world cup.

To play the pacific island teams,

you have to be prepared for off-loads, line breaks,

and basically, at the end of it, feeling like

you've been in a car crash.

Whenever you play Fiji, Tonga, Samoa,

in the morning, you're gonna be sore.

Oh, they love a hit.

It is about sport, about enjoying yourself,

about enjoying yourself smashing people.

In the good way.

We love running with the ball.

No fear rugby.

It is the brand of rugby pacific islanders produce.

Ethiopians are good at middle-distance running,

Brazilians are always awesome at football.

We feel we are like that with rugby.

Raw talent, the power, the speed,

but what we're lacking of

is organization.

They will compete. Of course they will compete,

but, you know, hand on heart, it is not a level playing field.

The gap is getting bigger at the moment.

Not going the other way, and I think that's a scary thing,

and a disappointing thing for world rugby.

It's going the wrong way.

You can go up against england and these

very professional teams in a world cup,

I would say, you've got very little chance of winning.

To win, the rugby football union

backed me financially to put in place

a lot of really important things

that I thought were required

to become the best team in the world.

And I unashamedly went out and hired the very best people

I could find.

We had a scrum coach, a line-out coach,

because I put so much stall on it.

We had a specialist kicking coach.

We had an eye vision coach.

If I thought it'd make a difference, I did it.

We're fortunate enough

that we get that every time.

The pacific island teams don't get that.

The preparation time for us has always

made a difference between the success of it as well.

You can tell during the preparation

how the tournament's more or less gonna go.

In 2003, we took our own chef.

Players knew they could just go to this guy any time.

I want beans on toast tonight, or egg and chips,

and he'd make sure it was done properly.

The 1995 all blacks team still thinks

someone got to their food.

We took our own lawyer.

I've got this top qc with me.

We got into trouble in 2003 because...

Against Samoa.

England have got 16 players on the field.

I had 16 men on the pitch, which wasn't

the cleverest thing to do at the time,

and suddenly, we're in a...

literally a court room.

We won the world cup by a drop goal.

The amount of hours over years and years and years

that went into that is huge.

But the humble bumble bee flies

when it shouldn't.

And in 2007, with a population so small

it would fit into a stadium, Tonga did too.

¶ ¶

when they found themselves

in the group of death with the mighty South Africa

and world champions, england.

Our budget for the whole world cup,

I think was something like...

Their washing budget.

They have the best kit, but that team

is still pretty ugly, aren't they?

It's quite sad, really.

You can have all the money in the world.

They got hit by the ugly stick.

I mean, we was staying in a church hall in Tonga.

Couldn't even have kit.

The team just looked like a bunch of fishermen

rather than an international team

going to the world cup.

I remember that vividly, we went to the airport,

it's only the family of the players

came to see us off.

Tonga media, they said it's the worst...

Tongan team to ever leave the shore.

But they didn't account

for the power of inspiration in the face of adversity.

I think we had like four guys from Tonga.

And the rest of us were playing overseas.

Nili latu was captain.

The way he plays is what I enjoy most about nili.

He is more action than his words.

Most teams, they're probably tagging me

as a small player.

There's a little story in the Bible,

it's about David and goliath.

You know, David was a Christian and he was small.

But goliath was one of the best warriors.

But because David trusted in God,

he killed him.

And I feel small before games.

But once I put on the Jersey,

I feel I'm one of the biggest guys on the field.

So Tonga would defy logic that year in France

and come as close as anyone

to changing an international sport forever.

All the great pacific island teams

have done the same.

You improvise around what you lack

and take strength from what you have.

That is the reason they compete against the odds.

All we have is our belief, our history, our blood.

Thousands of years before the vikings

and battling against prevailing winds,

a sea-faring people swept across the vast pacific ocean

in the most dramatic burst of overwater exploration

in history.

I've spent 48 years exploring.

It's a way I make a living.

Done the first journey round earth, vertically,

on its surface, and climbed Everest.

First to both poles, north and South.

And our Jack Russell is the first dog ever

to have peed on both poles.

And everything was planned on the seasons,

well in advance.

The polynesians had no idea at all

what they were getting into.

It's 10,000 meters deep, the pacific ocean,

which covers a third of the whole surface of earth.

And somewhere in the middle, like pinpricks,

are these little tiny islands.

It's a big mystery how the hell anybody got there.

But when they did get there, they must have been tough.

There's a lot of love in the islands,

expressed mainly through warfare.

And the subsequent eating of individuals.

It was the introduction of bay leaves

that really kicked things off.

Then in the 1770s, the brits turned up

and started planting their flag about the place.

- Any more tea, mademoiselle? - No.

- Any more tea master? - No.

The girls are half naked.

Straight away, for any sailor,

can't wait for a bit of shore leave here.

And then of course, once you get off

and realize that you're a runt amongst giants...

Suddenly things don't look so good.

It's because we were seafarers.

Obviously sailing was one, but then we row a lot.

And you always think that that's how

pacific islanders sort of build their

particular type of gene, I guess.

To be able to get to the pacific islands

would have required significant endurance,

strength, and determination.

Those individuals that made it there

are going to be the strongest and the fittest.

Soon after the sailors,

the missionaries arrived and had a profound effect

on the islanders' beliefs with the introduction

of christianity and a new pastime.

Rugby is a ferocious way of not killing your neighbor,

but having a good go at your neighbor.

They've always struggled to get enough

pairs of boots.

That is why the Christian missionaries

were welcome, 'cause they had boots.

It's a matter of being able to catch them

and then eat them, so they could get the boots.

I reckon rugby as a whole really suits us