Akapulu (Rugby)

Two events dominate the post-exam school life, the Class 6 & 5 boys’ rugby tournament and Tongan Culture Day at the end of November. The rugby event is the subject of conversation for the entire year for both the teachers and the students, especially the boys. From my first months working as a teacher back in February and March I remember eager students constantly alerting me to the fact that October and November was ruby time not class time. I have repeatedly been told that my region won last year, but in the highly scientific poll that I have conducted the past few weeks, every student and teacher from every school has assured me vehemently that they won the rugby tournament last year. Oh well, that is life in Tonga for you. Some of you may remember the track and field events I coached a few months ago, and Sports Day was certainly a larger event in terms of my contributions, the number of student participants, and family attendance, but for the few boys who make the regional team, rugby is as good as the school year gets.

First we trained at school. The older boys would line up practicing scrums (the play consisting of jumping on both your teammates and opponents after a tackle to attempt to retain possession of the ball), their backward passes, their tackling technique, and of course, their speed and shiftiness on offense. The practices were highly chaotic and far from a learning experience, but the kids loved it because they knew it was just the beginning.

My school is far too small to host its own rugby team, which has 15 members per side. We only have 7 Class 6 boys and 6 Class 5 boys, so even combined we could not support a full team. Luckily, like with sports day, the rugby competition is regional and we are Vahe Hahake #1 (East Region #1). Every afternoon for the past few weeks, Paea and sometimes I have taken the kids to the much larger and nearby school of GPS Ha’alaufuli to team up with their kids and the students of GPS Tu’anekivale. We would bring our Class 6 and 5 boys, throw them out onto the field, watch them smash into each other, and offer a few strategic tips and pieces of advice. Unlike with the track and field, I am pretty useless as a rugby coach and most of my time has been spent working as a cheerleader and a one trick pony of telling the kids to hit their opponents low rather than grabbing their necks during the tackles.

Over several weeks, we finally put a team together consisting mostly of Ha’alaufuli boys, a few kids from Tu’aneikivale, and my two largest Class 6 students, with several of my kids on the bench. Last Friday, the rugby competition began, consisting of 6 school regions. Our first match was against the Western region, home to one of the married Peace Corps volunteers, and we triumphed over them by scoring one try (a touchdown in rugby speak) and by shutting out the west – they were scoreless. We then played the northern district, again composing of a Peace Corps school, and manhandled them to assure our team a place in the semifinals tomorrow. I would love to tell you that the rugby was exciting, but I would be lying. Rugby is not a particularly enjoyable spectator sport, at least from this one American’s perspective, who does admittedly enjoy playing it, but it’s always fun to see a win and the teachers and students were happy. So…bring on the Semis!

And, speaking of rugby, the World Cup Rugby League is currently underway in England, but of course you know that. Tonga is one of the teams playing in the tournament and every match they play is watched by every single Tongan throughout the Kingdom. Parents and kids stay home. People bring tvs to their place of work. It is a major event. Last week, I went into town to attend a meeting for Camp Grow at one of the high schools, and when I arrived on time the principal asked me if we could wait for the rugby match to end before meeting. Tonga was playing Scotland, and I was happy to oblige as I walked into a room of dozens of students to watch the game with them on their large plasma flat screen tv, or, I mean a small tv with a large antenna sticking out of it.

Watching the Tongans reactions to the game was absolutely hilarious. There were shouts, cries of cheating, laughter, and enough anguish to make a fan of any team proud. The favored Tongans played poorly all match, only to make a stunning comeback to retake the lead with the time running down, but ultimately lost when Scotland scored in the last few minutes. According to my sources this was an upset and the Tongans will need some luck to reach the next round. The Tongan team has since beat the Cook Island team, as the Americans also did last week (USA! USA! USA!), but according to the coconut wireless (Tongan gossip) the Tongans are not playing very well because they have not been paid recently, and the people in Tonga are constantly calling the players’ parents to tell them to make their sons play better. If only I could do the same for the Heat!

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed this rugby filled post and the pictures below. Have a great weekend!

The scrum - We are in orange

The out of bounds play

Net ball, which occurred at the same time as the rugby tournament, is even less exciting than rugby

Tonga vs Scotland