By Mataeliga Pio Sioa
Heading towards an historic weekend with the Toa Samoa going where no other team sport in Samoa has gone before.
We are big boys now. Our minnow status is in a trash bin somewhere in England. We dumped it there last weekend.
It is buried under all the broken glasses of that rugby league ceiling our Toa Samoa crashed at the expense of their English rivals.
No predictions for Sunday morning though. Let’s continue to fly those flags and stir up a boisterous racket on the streets of Apia with our ‘tapuaiga.’
Keep that support pumped right up to the final whistle and beyond. Make the most of this rare emotional ride our Toa Samoa boys has won for us.
Let the moment play itself out so we can bask in our national pride for as long and as far as it will take us.
Lest we forget, our boys feed off our ‘Go Toa Samoa’ call. Keep that in mind.
As Rugby League Patron, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, exhorted….”the more we salute the courage and fighting spirit in our ‘Toa Samoa’ the more it will fire up the ‘toa’ in the hearts of our boys.”
Every player out on the test ground in Toa Samoa colours will be fired up 200 plus per cent. Any lower than that and it is sacrilegious by their own religious fighting standards.
The Australian Kangaroos is always the team to beat when it comes to this rugby code. We all know the love affair Australia has with rugby league.
Whatever tricks there are for winning a rugby league match, they will know – they practically devised those tricks.
Years of experience as champions of a sport they create will be at play when they front up to their fired up Samoan opponents.
Toa Samoa is in the same spirited mold as Tonga’s Mate Ma’a when they ran the Kangaroos all over the place, in an earlier cup final.
Australia pulled an unlikely win in the end that was deservedly Tonga’s but that is the law of the ‘bouncing ball’.
The bounce denied an historic win for Tonga but by the same token it could have easily gone the Mate Maa way.
But there again is another unknown element to factor into the Toa Samoa- Kangaroos World cup clash.
Toa Samoa fans should be drumming the wish for the ball to bounce our way when it counts the most as it did for Australia against Tonga.
This is sports. Our boys will give it all. No doubts there. A friendly bounce will be nice.
Australia has all the experience to fall back on but is the steel in their winning resolve strong enough?
Will it be able to stand the torching inferno the smoldering Toa Samoa will be unleashing at full force for the full duration?
Toa Samoa has fired up the imagination beyond the boundaries of our home support to include all the other island states in the region including New Zealand.
A win for the team is not just a win for Samoa but for the whole region.
Never has any other team brought unity to a region, Australia included, where sporting rivalry is strong.
Worth pondering over.