Word: maori
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...clear those players were pioneers. The current crop of Maori and Islander players (the sons mainly of poor Tongan and Samoan immigrants) forms a quarter of the ranks of the NRL. To put that in perspective, a group that has a 1 in 200 representation in the Australian populace has a 1 in 4 presence in the country's premier winter sports competition. It's a similar, if less striking, picture in New Zealand, where Maori and Islanders comprise 17% of the population, yet of late have made up more than half the players in the country's five provincial...
...soccer than the brutal 15-man game. Driving on Saturdays around Hawkes Bay, on New Zealand's North Island, the former New Zealand rugby league international Kevin Tamati notes that New Zealanders of European descent are all but absent from the rugby fields. "It saddens me," says Tamati, a Maori, of the exodus...
...years as an elite footballer, Lote Tuqiri, the Wallabies' granite-hard Fijian-born winger, has collided with players of all colors. The truth, he says, is that they all feel more or less the same. But, he adds, the Maori and Islander player "grows up with the sense that you're bigger than most of the people you play against. That puts a thing in your head that you're a powerful force, and you never quite lose that feeling. And you don't want to. You always want to intimidate with your physicality...
...Zealand, talent scouts swarm all over Manukau City, a poor region of Auckland with a large Polynesian population. It's a similar situation in pockets of Sydney and Brisbane, where mostly unskilled Maori and Islander migrants settled in significant numbers from the 1970s until recently, when Australian authorities tightened immigration laws. On both sides of the Tasman Sea, there's a sense that sports can offer a way out of poverty...
...cope with the change, clubs in both codes are increasingly appointing Maori and Islander men to their administrative staffs. "I think that's a really good idea," says Tuqiri. "We do hear and interpret things differently at times. It's not racism, but it can be easier to talk to someone of the same cultural background." Justifying his decision to leave Canterbury, Williams said the club was underpaying many of the players, and "I think it is my duty to speak up, especially for the Polynesian boys...