Waisale Serevi

The sport had never seen a player like him. For Waisale Serevi time seemed to stand still. A game-changer unlike any other, he changed not only the game, but also his country. And the reason he played? The 1977 Lions.

Fiji was something of a footnote when it came to the British and Irish telling of the 1977 Lions tour. It was number 26 on a 26-match tour that had almost culminated in a drawn series just three days before, when they narrowly lost 10-9 to the All Blacks in Auckland. Against the provinces, they’d won twenty matches, including the New Zealand Maori, and only come unstuck against New Zealand Universities in the final match before the first Test.

The trip to Fiji, to play in Suva’s Buckhurst Park, now the ANZ National Stadium, was supposed to be a nice stop-off on the way home. Everyone on the islands knew the Lions were in town, and the playing field was spread thick with locals, bands playing, the crowd singing; visits like this were rare, and indeed have remained rare ever since. 

Not that the Lions took it lightly, they played plenty of their big dogs: Phil Bennett, the tour captain, Ian McGeechan, Andy Irvine, Gareth Evans, Graham Price, Bill Beaumont, and Willie Duggan, all lined up in the sweltering heat in front of a partisan crowd of 20,000, with a local referee in the middle.

Fiji were an unknown quantity, at least to the Lions taking to the field. Before their later fame in sevens, they were solid in fifteens, but the previous year had been whitewashed in a three-Test series by Australia, who also happened to be the only tier one side they’d beaten, albeit more than twenty years before.

However, there was some confidence from the home side, coming from a recent series win over Pacific neighbours Tonga. 

A battle of styles commenced. Fiji ran everything, the Lions kicked for position. The lead was handed over four times, but the hosts won out, with five tries to three, 25-21. According to the report of the only visiting journalist present, Kiwi Keith Quinn, when flanker Vuato Narisia broke the 21-21 deadlock for the winning score, ‘the noise was deafening and the clamour loud and rapturous; the score enabled Fiji to score its first-ever win over a major touring team’. 

The noise from the stadium and the celebrations that followed, spread across the island, quickly reaching the town of Nasinu, just twenty minutes from the stadium, on the edge of the Colo-I-Suva Forest Park. Here, the true impact of that Test on Fijian rugby would begin.

A nine-year-old Waisale Serevi was washing his school uniform when he heard the commotion from the game. “I heard all the people and ran to my mum and dad to ask them why everyone was happy,” Waisale tells Rugby Journal. “And it was because Fiji had just beaten the British & Irish Lions. Phil Bennett was playing, and so was Bill Beaumont, who’s now chair of World Rugby. And that inspired me, I fell in love with rugby that day. 

“In my mind if rugby makes people happy, then I wanted to play rugby to make people happy,” he says. “To cut a long story short, I’ve been blessed and privileged to have had 21 years of rugby. I’ve been to seven rugby World Cups, three in fifteens, four in sevens, two World Cups as captain. I’ve been able to not only make the people of Fiji happy, but I’ve also made friends all over the world...”

But we’re not in the business of cutting long stories short. The third of five children, Waisale started playing on the back of the Lions. School work often suffered due to rugby, but he was only ever heading in one direction. “We had age-group competitions every Saturday in Suva,” he says. “I think I set my goals in 1977,” he says. “And it took me ten years to represent Fiji, I represented them first in 1989, in sevens, and we lost.”

His debut at the Hong Kong Sevens made the world take note, even in defeat. That year, New Zealand had been, as always, the favourites. And, although it was a tag they lived up to when beating reigning champions Australia, 22-10 in the final, it was Waisale that caught the imagination. Aged just eighteen, he won ‘best and fairest player’, as it was then, and became an instant marked man, not that it made a difference: defences hadn’t yet been built to shackle a player like Waisale. 

Fiji hadn’t won Hong Kong since 1984, but pushed the Kiwis all the way, losing 10-12. Waisale returned the following year. “I lost the Hong Kong Sevens in 1989, then in 1990, I achieved my goal of making people happy, we won, it was a public holiday, because we’d won the biggest sevens tournament in the world,” he says.

It was the first of three consecutive wins, before [Western] Samoa brought the run to an end in 1993 with a 14-12 victory. But Serevi had begun his love affair with Hong Kong, he would win four more titles, including one doubling as a Rugby World Cup. “Without the Hong Kong Sevens, there would be no Serevi,” he says. “Without Hong Kong Sevens there would be no HSBC Sevens series. Without Hong Kong Sevens there would be no Olympic Sevens. It’s everything.”

Suva-born Pate Tuilevuka and current general manager of MLR side, Seattle Seawolves, was eight when Waisale made his Hong Kong debut. Today, they are close friends, as part of an enclave of Seattle-based Fijians, and while it was in the American city they first met in person, Waisale’s impact on Pate goes much further back. “Growing up, Serevi was the biggest celebrity in Fiji,” he recalls. “You’re in a country where rugby is almost like a religion so someone like Serevi, everybody idolised him. 

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“Especially when I was growing up, as Fiji were trying to establish themselves on the world map, the Hong Kong Sevens was the biggest tournament in Fiji and after going through a drought, Serevi hit the scene, and everybody was like, ‘who is this kid?’.

“When we won the Hong Kong Sevens,” continues Pate, “the government would shut down on the Monday, and declare a public holiday, which almost cemented his legacy, his legendary status – we got to miss school because Serevi helped the Fiji team win, he was that good.”

As Pate’s own rugby education had also begun – he would go on to play professional rugby in Ireland and represent USA – he appreciated Serevi’s skills almost as much as the days off.

“He brought a flair that nobody had ever seen,” he says, “he made the game look easy, he made the hard teams look easy [to beat], he just played the game differently and people were freaking out. He changed everything. 

“For the first time, as a young player growing up, you were thinking, ‘you can play that?’. He revolutionised the way the game was played.”

As the Lions result proved, Fiji were decent at fifteens, and they had also won Hong Kong before, in the early-80s, but this was different. “Fiji always had amazing players, big tall guys who were athletic and who could run,” explains Pate, “but Wais took it to a whole different level, and he was the smallest guy on the field. He did it in a cheeky way too, so it was entertaining.”

And as with every icon, it was also about how he looked.  “People realised as soon as he came on the scene, when he was eighteen, that he was different,” says Pate. “He did this thing with his collars, where he would tuck them in, and he always rolled up his sleeves [even on short-sleeve shirts], and all the young kids were like, ‘we’re going to do that’. 

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“People in Fiji always told you to do things a certain way: ‘tuck in your shirt’; ‘this is the way you play rugby’; but Wais changed that. He thought outside the box. Throwing the ball between his legs, the goose steps, ducking under a tackle, and just the cheeky little dropkicks [conversions] he would do. Everybody else would hit [conversions] as hard as they could, but he would stand five metres in front of a player, and hit it just high enough above the bar to go over. He made the game look so easy. 

“When I think of Wais, I compare him to Stephen Curry, the basketball player. He makes the three-pointers look so easy, but that’s because of all the hard work he does, and that’s Serevi too. He made it look easy and effortless, that’s why they called him the maestro.”

Waisale is in Fiji for the wedding of his 27-year-old daughter Unaisi, the eldest of three children. While Unaisi went into the American air force and netball, playing for American Samoa, youngest daughter Asinate and son Waisale Junior, are both on a rugby path. “Asinate represented the USA in fifteens, but she’s now playing for Fijiana, aiming for the World Cup,” Waisale explains. “She’s her own style of player. First of all, she’s taller than me, and a forward, and then she does things that I never did – like run at people.”

Waisale Junior, meanwhile, is on a rugby scholarship in Japan, where he made the training squad for last year’s Olympics. A country close to Waisale senior’s heart, it was where he took his first step in professional rugby, albeit in an amateur era, when he signed for Mitsubishi in 1993, and moved to Kyoto. “It was challenging for me because of the language barrier,” he admits. “You have no option, you turn on the TV, it’s Japanese, the radio Japanese, all the people were Japanese, but I was blessed to have started my journey as a professional, well semi-professional, because you still needed to work to get paid.

“But for me, to go to Japan was a blessing, I learnt so much coming from Fiji.”

The first lesson was how ‘Fiji time’ didn’t always work in other parts of the world.

“I learnt how the people worked really hard, but I learnt about Japanese time, that was the thing I kept with me forever. You can lose your car, your house, you can lose everything – except for your life – and get it back, but time is something you cannot get back.”

Time-keeping was a revelation. “The Japanese when they tell you to meet at 8am, they meet fifteen minutes before,” he says. “This was a big change, especially coming from Fiji, where you had ‘Fiji time’, and for 8am, it could mean 8.15am, 8.30am, sometimes not even turn up, and not even call. 

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“At quarter to eight every morning,” continues Waisale, “music would come on in every section of the company [Mitsubishi] and everyone would exercise together for ten to fifteen minutes before starting work, jumping, squats, stretching, that kind of thing. 

“Fijians are always late, so I’d be coming in and see them doing their exercises,” he explains. “And the thing is, nobody ever tells you that you’re late, or tells you off, which makes it worse because you just feel bad instead.

“So, eventually, I started to get there on time, and join in the exercise every day.”

The work ethic was built through a hefty workload. “I was working at the service centre, so in the morning, I’d have Japanese [language] class from 8am until 12pm, then I’d go back for lunch at the factory, change into overalls and work at the service centre, changing oil and water and all that. And then after work I’d go to rugby training.”

Mitsubishi wasn’t so much a company as a community, with 4,000 people, a hospital, baseball diamond, rugby and football pitches all on site. And when offers from rugby league in Australia came his way, Fiji’s Methodist Church, always an influence on Waisale, were among those keen for him to stay in rugby union.  

Instead of Australia, his next move took him to Leicester, in the English league’s first professional season, 1997. “A great experience,” he says, “as I’m talking to you, I can see a photo of me and Joel Stransky. It was good because it was the opportunity to play among some of the best rugby players in the world, I played with the likes of Martin Johnson, Martin Corry, Neil Back, Will Greenwood... It was great, but not the weather...”

The style of rugby proved to be an education too. “For me, going to these places, is a learning thing,” he says. “I was learning how the English played their rugby, and back then it was ten-man rugby, but we had very good forwards, with Fritz van Heerden, Martin Johnson, ABC Club – Darren Garforth, Graham Rowntree and Richard Cockerill, I still remember all their names. 

“I was going to discover how they played rugby, what suited them and the size of the players they had.”

The English game wasn’t perhaps the perfect complement to Serevi’s unique skills, but there were moments. “I have a lot of great memories but one that stands out was when we played Heineken Cup again Toulouse, at Welford Road. They were pressuring our line, so I dummy-passed, chip-kicked over the top and caught it on the full, stepped the player and then passed to Will Greenwood who went under the post. 

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“Then in the same game, I dummied, and scored under the posts – that side had a lot of French players too, it was ‘98, a great side and I managed to set up a try and scored against them.”

Joel Stransky, the ex-Springbok fly-half has plenty of good memories of the Fijian he shares a mantlepiece with in Suva.  “From day one in Leicester he was always the most humble, down-to-earth, most sincere guy you’ll ever meet,” says Joel. “As a human being, he was a proper, lovely man.

“He had a skill-set that was sensational, he could step and beat people, he could make any pass and had the best feet any of us had ever seen.”

The critical thing was, like a lot of specialists, Waisale didn’t quite adapt and they didn’t find one position that was home. “Bob [Dwyer, the Leicester coach] played him at scrum-half, on the wing, full-back, fly-half, and it didn’t always translate,” recalls Joel, “but he never gave up. He carried on, and at training, he would always do things that stood out. We all admired him.”

“The Leicester squad was a great environment to come into,” continues Joel, “family orientated, and he fitted in well: a family man, warm, sincere and we became good mates – both southern hemisphere fair-weather players, so we spent a lot of time together

“I would have loved to have seen him in Super Rugby,” concludes Joel, “in the dry conditions of South Africa and Australia, he’d have really suited that.”

After Leicester, came France, and Stade Montois, a second-tier side in the south-west of the country, near Bordeaux. “I think coming from Fiji, to play French rugby, it was much better for me, because of the way the French play, like Fijians,” says Waisale. “They loved to run the ball from anywhere, and the ball always goes to the wing.”

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Limits on non-French players meant he first had to coach the side, before getting on to the field in his second season. “We had a good time,” he says. “I helped the club from Pro2 to Pro1, and the country was good, the culture was good, we love France, and in 2000, my son was born. He’s 22 now and qualified for three or four countries!”

Throughout his time abroad, Waisale had always flown back for Fiji, either for the fifteens – he won 38 caps and scored 221 points from 1989 to 2003, the World Cup in Australia – or the sevens, nearly always for his beloved Hong Kong. 

As the game progressed, more sevens players emerged, often branded the ‘next Serevi’, even while the original one was still in the squad and winning tournaments for his country.

“Every year, Fiji gets another player,” he says. “And around that time we had William Ryder, he was one of the best players that ever played for Fiji, he was better than me, faster, had the step, and he had everything.

“And I always encouraged them all to look after themselves, I’d say, ‘I’m slowing down, I’m going to be gone soon and you need to carry the flag’.  But he had a lot of pressure from his friends, that’s why he didn’t go longer. 

“I kept encouraging him to look after himself, that’s how he would last longer, but he didn’t use that talent to get the things his talent deserved.

“But,” reflects Waisale, “he was the best sevens player, he was the definition of Fijian sevens – the step, the speed, the attack, always making defences work harder. I think he was maybe 28 when he stopped.”

Watch any clips of Waisale playing for his country, and pressure seems to be the least of his worries, even when the hopes of his nation were nearly always pinned on what the man in the number six shirt would do on the pitch. “I knew there was a lot of pressure,” he says. “I always told the players when they’re wearing the jersey for Fiji, that Fijians need results. 

“I knew the pressure was there, every time I ran on to the field, but my goal was always to get fitter, to be the fittest rugby player in the world. 

“Because of that, the pressure didn’t come when I played, the hard work had already been done. I always knew that whatever happened, win or lose, the next time I played I’d be better, fitter, even just a little bit more than the time before.”

Choosing the right goal also made a difference. “The goal shouldn’t be to represent Fiji, well maybe that’s one per cent,” he says, “but the other 99 per cent is what happens next, because that’s where the hard work starts. You have to set your own standards, and then the next week, up it all by another level.

Depending on who was in charge, Fiji didn’t always pick overseas players, and even a talent such as Waisale, wasn’t immune. Unable to balance work commitments in France with fitness tests in Fiji, the kind of flexibility you might have thought would be on offer for a World Cup Sevens-winning captain wasn’t there. He played little in 2002, and was dropped for sevens in 2003, although ironically played for the fifteens at the World Cup in Australia later that year. It was a similar story in 2004, and he missed Hong Kong for two consecutive years. “The coaches only wanted to play local players, so since maybe 2002, I’d not played,” he says, “but Fiji sevens went down, and I knew I could play again, so I went back to Fiji to try and get back in.”

After his spell in France, he’d been staying with friends in London, when Chris Sheasby, an England player he knew from the sevens circuit, suggested he play for his club Staines, which he duly did. “And we won our division,” adds Waisale.

Training with a friend who was a boxer in the army, even at 36 and outside of a professional rugby environment, Waisale had kept his high standards. “To play in the World Cup [in 2005], you had to first play a tournament in Fiji to qualify, so I went back and played in the Marist Sevens, and I got selected.”

Wayne Pivac, now coach of Wales, named him as captain. Of course, they won, defeating New Zealand 29-19 in the final, but it was the semi-final that stood out. “We faced England and the game went into extra-time,” says Waisale. “Ben Gollings, who now coaches Fiji, had the chance to win with a kick right at the end of normal time, but he missed it.”

Instead, it was left to Waisale to score the sudden-death try that took them to the final. “It was Ben chasing me,” he laughs. “Whenever I see Ben, he always says about my try, but I remind him he should’ve got the kick.” 

Even with his 37th birthday approaching, he wasn’t done. “After we won the World Cup, everybody retired,” he explains. “They said to me, ‘you can coach until you’re done playing’, so I coached and we won the World Series, the first time in many years that someone other than New Zealand had done that.”

But even with a World Cup and World Sevens Series to his name, and all the collateral that should come with nearly twenty years of gold-standard service to the sevens, Waisale fell foul of rugby politics in 2007. “I had been coaching and selecting my players, but then they wanted to bring in a panel of selectors,” he says. “Then, there was one time when I went to a sevens in Darwin, and when I got back, they had already selected players. It was difficult to understand the reason they selected their team, so we didn’t have a good relationship.

“And so, I stepped out.”

On his strapping and boots, whenever he played, Waisale referenced Philippians 4:13. ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’. The most challenging of times followed his departure from the sevens set-up. It had been his life, he’d changed the game in every sense, he’d helped give the nation regular days off, and yet financially the rewards had never stacked up. He’d been too generous. 

There was a brief stint coaching Papua New Guinea, but things didn’t work out. It was part of a period of his life he’s described as his ‘lowest ebb’. Today, Waisale rarely talks about it, at least not publicly, simply because he looks forward. But back then, in 2010, there was no full-time rugby, no career, no Fiji, but there was alcohol, there was depression. 

It wasn’t until 2016 that he first spoke on it, speaking at a university college in Canada, when he said: “For me it was lie down and quit or move on to the next level. I thought about those that had supported me – my wife and children. People who knew me and my relations were reaching out to me but they could not touch me.”

He played in an invitational sevens in Canada that proved to be life-changing. A chance meeting with another Fijian, Semi Lotawa, based in Seattle, brought about an opportunity to coach in the American seaport city. “I was blessed to get the chance to come to America and get my family across,” he says, when we broach the subject. “I think, in my career, I don’t regret anything, I always say that the things that you come across, the testing times, you need them to keep moving forward. 

“I’m not the only one facing challenges, all the people in the world face challenges, but it’s how you stand up and face your mountain and keep going. That is just how you’re going to get to your destination.”

The destination of Seattle is now home, where he met Pate, who was as surprised as any by what had befallen his hero. “Serevi is one of most optimistic people you’ll ever meet,” he says. “And like many icons they never look back, and whenever I was with him [coaching for Serevi Rugby], the overwhelming thing he always wanted to do was step up and do something for Fiji. He never looked back, he had a very positive perspective, and that was quite contagious; the guy lights up a room, that personality...”

During his time with Serevi Rugby, Waisale’s academy, Pate would travel America, coaching in schools and universities, while also identifying talent for the national rugby set-up. “I ended up coaching with Serevi, and honestly one of the biggest challenges was that things came so easy to him, and at first it was hard for him to articulate how to do a certain skill, he was, ‘just do it like this’, and I was like ‘what? I can’t do that’.”

More than a decade later, Pate and Serevi remain friends. “He’s a close friend, I have a lot of respect and admiration for him, Serevi will always be someone in my life I will have time for.”

And even now, aged 54, Waisale still plays when he gets the chance. “He’s always training, he could still play today,” Pate says. “The reason he lasted so long was that he adapted his game. People talk about rugby being a collision sport, but it’s an evasion sport, and at evading he’s the master of it. It helped that he was slippery as an eel, and hard to tackle, so when most of us have the wear and tear of sport, he’s been able to avoid that as much as you can. Between that and the way he lives, always training, eating healthily, it’s not surprising [he played so long].”

Waisale didn’t just shape sevens, he shaped Fiji. As coach of England and then Fiji, Ben Ryan has seen the impact Waisale has had on both the game and country first-hand. Before that, he felt his impact in a different way. “He actually punched me in the face,” laughs Ben, “I reached down to score a try [for Cambridge], put the ball on my own foot instead, he came in to tackle and punched me. They got the ball, and scored.

“It was in 1997, I was captain of Cambridge University, and we played Fiji twice in four days, just after they’d won the World Cup [where Waisale had been player of the tournament, beating South Africa in the final], they played in the Henley and London Floodlit Sevens.”

But, punch aside, the way he played enraptured Ben. “He was just mesmeric,” he says. “He had this ability to decide what time it was, he had his own unique style, so confident – he just had this air about him. 

“I would call him a fisherman in rugby technical terms,” he continues. “He’s the master fisherman. Imagine him being in the middle of the field, and he’s kind of metaphorically casting his fishing rod, to see who’s going to take a bite. He’s attracting defenders, then playing into the space. If they won’t come, then he’ll go. He’s just always playing with spaces and time. I talk to young players and old players, and I always reference Waisale...”

When Ben took over at Fiji, he met Waisale. “Fast forward about twenty years, and in my first week in Fiji [as head coach of the sevens], I went to watch a sevens tournament, and I saw Wais.”

Did you mention the punch? “We laugh about it now,” says Ben. “He didn’t believe me when I told him, so I had to show him a clip.”

With Waisale often invited to tournaments, the two built up a friendship. “He’s been in plenty of Fiji changing rooms during tournaments, chatting to players,” says Ben, “but it was never a threat [to me], he was always positive, he loves being Fijian. And they love him, whenever Serevi was in Fiji, it showed they adored him, nobody was anti-Serevi.”

Ben counts Waisale as a good friend. “We kind of bounced ideas off each other, we used to do that all the time,” he says. “He wouldn’t say, ‘Ben don’t do this’, he just kind of nudges understanding, and helped accelerate what I knew about Fiji’.”

Even though Ben has coached some of Fiji’s other greats, who formed the first Olympic gold-medal winning side, Waisale remains a cut above. “He’s still the best sevens player we’ve ever had,” continues Ben, who is now working with Brentford FC, “and that’s not rose-tinted glasses, he was ahead of his time, in terms of fitness levels, communication, he is synonymous with the game of sevens, and will forever have this reputation, as the best player that ever lived.

“He had talent,” adds Ben, “but on top of that, he had the foundation of very good fitness, that allowed him to play at such a high tempo for all those games. He was the first. Some New Zealand teams pioneered nutrition and training modalities, led by Gordon Tietjens and Eric Rush, but before that Waisale was already doing that. He understood the connection between fitness, healthy lifestyle and consistent performance and he drove all those teams to do the same.”

For the past seven months Waisale has been coaching across America with Rhinos Rugby, which brings in young players from around the world for high-performance courses. Giving back, either for his work, or in his own time, is what matters. He tries to get back to Fiji when he can, and although almost fifteen years have passed since he was last on the world stage, he’s still recognised when he returns. “Oh yeah, there’s a lot of people [who recognise me],” he says. “I came out [from Seattle, where he lives] on a Saturday morning, and as I was driving from the airport, there was a primary school playing rugby, and so I stopped, and went to see them and give them two rugby balls – they wouldn’t have even been around when I was playing, but they knew who I was.

“I always want to help and give back,” he continues. “After all these years looking at the journey, rugby has given me the opportunities to grow as a person, and I still love rugby for the core values – the discipline, sportsmanship, camaraderie – it’s taught me about being myself. 

“And, secondly, it’s the opportunity to talk to young people about rugby, and what a beautiful sport it is.”

Back in Seattle, Pate sums up his former colleague, friend and hero. “Serevi ushered in an era, a different type of player,” he says, “what he did then, people weren’t doing and now they do it regularly. He opened up the door, and people thought, ‘this is possible, I’ll try this’; he was the Michael Jordan of sevens rugby.

“Not a lot of people will admit it,” concludes Pate, “but the reason we have a World Sevens Series now, is because of the things Serevi did, what he started, the entertainment factor. “He was before the internet, and YouTube, and yet Fijian people still know who he is and remember him. Can you imagine if he played now? He’d be as big as they come.

“Serevi is truly an icon of the game, when it comes to that rugby hall of fame, nobody is more deserving.”  

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Susi Baxter-Seitz

This extract was taken from issue 19 of Rugby.
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