I started my love affair with rugby in 1969 when I arrived at Grangefield Grammar School. The following year a rugby team arrived on tour in Britain who were to prove a delight to young rugby players like myself and a despair to long-suffering school games masters.

 

Designated ‘The Ladies from Hell’ on account of the skirts they wore as part of their national costume and their tough, uncompromising tackles on the pitch, the Fijian rugby team of 1970 were like nothing that we had seen before in this country.

 

As school-boys we were being taught the traditional virtues of disciplined rugby. Forwards provided ‘solid’ scrums and line-outs. Backs passed the ball in ‘controlled’ lines, looking for gaps in the opposition ranks through which they could run. Above all, it was drilled into us that forwards must NEVER attempt something so silly as to run with the ball in hand. As a forward, if you found yourself with the ball you should seek to engage with the opposition and set up a ruck or maul from which controlled activity the ball could be released to the backs to perform their magic.

 

You could be dropped for the heinous crime of failing to observe these rigid demarcation lines (or at least banished to the touch-line to undertake some gruelling press-ups).

 

Then came the Fijians.

 

Every player – forwards included – ran and passed the ball.

 

They seemed to be everywhere at once.

 

They ran forwards, sideways, even backwards, in search of space and gaps.

 

They passed like they had never been shown the correct techniques: one-handed passes, over-the –head passes.

At times it was more like basketball as played by the Harlem Globetrotters than the ‘Don Rutherford’ textbook style of rugby we were being taught.

 

It was entertaining. And it was effective.

 

On Saturday 24 October 1970 at the Gosforth Greyhound Stadium the Fijian tourists beat the Barbarians 29-9. And this was a Barbarians team that contained some great players – including the greatest player ever to grace the field of play, Gareth Edwards.

 

Those Fijians had a big impact on me – an aspiring loose-head prop. I never quite matched their skills – but early the following I did something very naughty for a prop-forward. I scored a try.

 

Fiji are still a team that can spring surprises. The first forward to score a drop goal at a Rugby World Cup was a Fijian: prop-forward Manasa Qoro dropped a monster 40 metre drop goal against Italy in 1987.

 

Ten years later at Rugby World Cup 2007 Fiji broke a lot of Welsh hearts.

 

Fiji beat Wales 38-34 to claim a Quarterfinal slot. Wales had underestimated Fiji.

 

In the quarter-final itself South Africa – the eventual winners of the tournament - did not make the same mistake. Fiji pressed the Springboks hard before going down 37-20.

 

When Stuart Lancaster’s team face the cibi – the Fijian war dance - this evening in the opening match of RWC 2015, they should treat the team performing it with due respect.