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Rugby is the indigenous community's favourite game.
Boys play from a young age and join school teams that compete against
other districts. Rugby teams consist of 7, 10 or 15 players. Fiji's
national team of 15 players is ranked among the best in the world, and
its seven-member team defeated all rivals at world championships in 1997,
1998 and 1999. Before Fiji established its own national league, its best
players joined teams in Australia and New Zealand. Soccer is popular in the Fijian Indian community. French missionaries taught the game to Indian children at mission schools in the 19th century. Workers in the sugar towns of western Viti Levu have formed soccer teams and clubs. |
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Other popular organized sports are volleyball,
cricket, netball and field hockey. Wrestling is a traditional pastime,
and many people enjoy disk pitching (similar to shuffleboard). Older
men and women often gather for lawn bowling. People in Fiji have built and raced outrigger canoes for generations. Rotuma Island holds women's canoe races. In 1998, Fiji hosted the World Sprints, the world championship for outrigger races. The Fijian version of a whitewater raft, the bamboo bilibili, is also a long-standing part of village culture. Many villages lie alongside rivers, so rafting is a convenient way to travel. Surfing is also popular and has been enjoyed by Fijians for hundreds of years. |
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Children fly kites and play rounders (similar to
baseball). Kabadi is a game in which players line up in two teams.
One player tries to reach the other team and get back without being caught
while repeating the word "kabadi" in a single breath. In the game
of gutti (five stone), children place five stones on the backs of
their hands, flip them into the air, and try to catch all five with the
same hand. Fiji hosted the first South Pacific Games in 1963 and will host the event again in 2003. At the International Bula Marathon, held every June, participants come to Fiji from many countries to run the distance between Lautoka and Nadi. Fiji has also sent athletes to every Summer Olympics since 1956. Perhaps the most popular activity in Fiji is chatting around a bowl of kava, a mildly narcotic drink made from the yaqona plant. People often enjoy several hours of kava and talk in the evenings. In the city, workers often take a morning kava break and look forward to a round of kava after work. |