Fiji’s Nemani Nadolo in action with Australia’s David Pocock (left) and Matt Giteau during their Pool A IRB World Cup match at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, England, yesterday. (Reuters)

By John Davidson/The Guardian

Every now and then you see close family links in top-class sport, usually as teammates or in the coaching box. Brothers competing alongside each other or father and son coach-player duos. The Chappells were one famous Australian cricketing trio, the Waughs another. In rugby we’ve enjoyed the fantastic Ella clan and more recently the Fainga’a brothers. But yesterday we were treated to an interesting case that sums up the bold and sometimes bizarre world of eligibility in professional rugby, when cousins Tevita Kuridrani and Nemani Nadolo lock horns on opposing national sides.
Winger Nadolo, who was born in Sigatoka but moved to Brisbane at three months old, is Fiji’s star man. A 196cm, 126 kg behemoth, he grew up in Australia, went to Nudgee College and was a Queensland Schoolboy a decade ago with current Wallabies Will Genia and Quade Cooper. Nadolo even played for Australia’s Under-20s at the 2008 Junior World Championship, but at the Millennium Stadium he will be trying to smash the Wallabies’ Cup campaign.
Against him will be a bruising outside centre he knows intimately. Kuridrani was born in Suva and grew up in the village of Namatakula. He moved to Brisbane as a teenager and went on to represent Fiji’s Under-20s at the 2010 Junior World Championship. A similarly imposing specimen, at 196cm and 102 kg, Kuridrani played Sevens for Australia and then for Australia’s Under-20s at the 2011 Junior World Championship, before breaking into Super Rugby with the Brumbies. The 24-year old is one of Michael Cheika’s key individuals in the Australian backline.
“Ball in hand he’s really impressive,” Waratahs coach and former All Black Daryl Gibson says. “Kuridrani has got really good go-forward and I think [he is] one of the players who has really improved through regular game-time at international level. With Australia really starting to narrow down the team’s identity on the way they want to play the game, I think he’ll really suit that pattern they want to play.”
Like his younger cousin, Nadolo is a special talent, as his performance in the World Cup opener against England showed. The Fijians might have been beaten but the human wrecking ball scored a try, ran for 44 metres and beat seven defenders single-handedly. Probably the closest thing in modern rugby to Jonah Lomu, Fiji tried to get the ball to him at nearly every occasion, such is his influence. He’s also the one that got away for Australian rugby. Unwanted by the Waratahs he headed overseas in 2010, spending time in the UK and Japan, before joining the Crusaders last year and terrorising Super Rugby opposition.
Simon Poidovin, the former Wallaby and World Cup winner in 1991, has no doubt that the 27-year old former Randwick and Manly winger is the player Australia must contain at all costs. “Nadolo was certainly the best player on the field for the Fijians,” he says. “He’s the man for the Wallabies to be getting up and at with their defence.”
Nadolo may have a point to prove to Australian rugby and so too should Fiji’s flyhalf Ben Volavola. Sydney-born Volavola grew up with dreams of being a Wallaby. The playmaker has set alight Sydney’s Shute Shield with Southern Districts for the past three years and debuted in Super Rugby with the Waratahs in 2013. But despite a promising start, he fell behind Israel Folau and Bernard Foley in the pecking order for both the fullback and five-eighth positions. Deemed redundant by Cheika, he will join the Crusaders next year.
Gibson knows Volavola’s skill-set well: “Ben’s a very smart player. That’s probably one of his real strengths...that he really understands the game. I’m sure he’ll understand the coach’s game-plan and how to put that into action. From my three years with him that’s one of the things that really impressed me about him. He’s a really good kid.”
The Fijian-Australian connections don’t stop with those three. Fiii are coached by New Zealander John McKee, who has spent many years coaching in Australia and working for the ARU. The team’s loosehead prop, the wonderfully named Campese Ma’afu, was born and raised in Sydney and his older brother Salesi played 14 times for the Wallabies, while winger Waisea Nayacalevu previously played club rugby in Victoria.
One notable member of Australia’s squad is Fiji-born: Hamilton-raised winger Henry Speight. Another Fijian flyer, Taqele Naiyaravoro, just missed out on the green and gold’s World Cup squad. The Wallabies have been blessed with several Fijian stars over the years including Nadolo and Kuridrani’s cousin Lote Tuqiri, the Korolevu-born dual international who played for Australia in both rugby union and league, and Radike Samo who was capped 23 times for Australia. Chris Kuridrani, Nadolo’s younger brother, is contracted with the Reds and one day may don a Wallabies jersey.
Fijians have gone on to represent New Zealand, England, Italy and France with distinction. Such is the melting pot of today’s game that a staggering 20% of the 620 players competing at this World Cup are playing for countries different than the ones they were born in. Samoa tops the list with 13 players born and eligible to represent New Zealand, while the Wallabies’ squad contains individuals with Papua New Guinean, Kiwi, Samoan, Zimbabwean and Tongan heritage. With only three years needed to qualify for residency to represent any country, not to mention the one grandparent rule, combined with the force of globalisation and mass migration, international rugby is now incredibly diverse and exotic.
Today it’s commonplace to see Kiwis representing Japan, Australians playing for the United States and South Africans starring for the Azzurri. “That’s the way of the world,” Poidevin believes. “There’s lots of people migrating around the world. [Will] Skelton came here as a kid, [Quade] Cooper came here as a kid, [Scott] Sio came here as a kid, well they’re Aussies.
“It’s just the way of the world in 2015. There’ll be a lot more people going forward being adopted citizens.”