‘A player gets poleaxed and they laugh’: The former Swan changing the game for Fiji

Fijian Drua head coach Mick Byrne walks into his local coffee shop in Nadi and several customers’ heads slowly swivel as he places his order.

The 200cm former Sydney Swans ruckman knows a life of anonymity is impossible for him in Fiji. He leads a team who are now the hottest ticket in town, with Drua players gazing down from billboards across the country advertising everything from banking to bottled water.

Byrne is now into his third season leading the Drua and ahead of Saturday’s home clash against the Waratahs, he is still impressed by the deafening reception the club receives at their grounds in Lautoka and Suva.

“We’ve got the best fans in the world,” Byrne said. “They come here to enjoy themselves, they’ve invested a fair whack of their wage to come and watch us and they don’t allow us to determine their attitude, they don’t expect us to give them their joy (by winning).

“Around the world, I’ve seen it everywhere: fans will come and they’ll be nervous about the game, then when the team doesn’t win, they’re angry at the team and angry at themselves.

“Our people come to a game of football as a day out for the whole family to enjoy themselves. They express themselves right from the start.

Fanatical Drua fans in Lautoka earlier this month.Credit: Getty

“They’ll cheer all the good things and they’ll laugh at some of the bad things, which amazes me still. A Fijian player will get absolutely poleaxed and the crowd will just laugh, it’s like theatre.”

Byrne made his name in Australian Rules after growing up playing both rugby codes in Sydney, winning a VFL premiership with Hawthorn before finishing his playing career back home with the Swans.

He went on to pioneer the role of a skills coach in rugby, making his mark with the All Blacks and the Wallabies, before getting his first head coaching role at Fiji’s first professional sports team just before their inaugural Super Rugby season in 2022.

Byrne arrived in Fiji to find there was no permanent training base for his team. Last year, when it rained heavily the club trained on a patch of land on the local golf course, with the goalkickers having to make do with no posts or markings for pre-season.

Six weeks ago, the team finally got their first permanent training field up and running near their base by Nadi airport, enabling them to prepare mostly without major interruption. Unfortunately, in the lead-up to Saturday’s game, torrential rain has thrown up a new set of challenges for Byrne and his players.

Mick Byrne, right, with former Wallabies coach Michael Cheika in 2019.Credit: Rugby AU Media/Stuart Walmsley

“Tomorrow could be a prime example, we could turn up and the ground is not available,” he said. “We might have to make a late call about an hour before we’re due to go out and have to find the only dry patch of ground.

“We’ll say that to the players who will get on the bus, the music will be blaring, they’ll have a party and it’ll be a party atmosphere to go to the ground.

“I’ve been in other environments where boys might be like ‘what’s going on here?’ When they get there, they train their hearts out, they’ll be no whinging, they just get on with it.”

Byrne was an elite ruckman in the old VFL and prided himself on the detail he took in his preparation. His work ethic transformed neatly into the depth of his analysis with some of rugby’s greatest players including Dan Carter and Richie McCaw regularly utilising his ability to notice minute technical parts of their game that could be improved.

Fijian Drua head coach Mick Byrne preparing his playersCredit: Getty

When Byrne arrived at the Drua, he had to evolve as a coach quickly. He would set homework on certain plays and find most of his players hadn’t completed it. He had taken over a team making their first tentative steps in a professional environment he had lived and breathed since he was a teenager in Melbourne.

“I think it was probably a weakness in my behaviour at the time to make assumptions of where everybody was at, which is against what I’ve always lived by, but I think the pressure of being the head coach you just wanted to get on [with it],” Byrne said.

“When things weren’t happening, you were like, ‘it’s got to happen’. It took me a while to realise that that’s not the way I want to be anyway. But also these guys had never done it before, even though some staff have been to Olympics (with Fiji sevens). They’ve had never done it day to day, 24/7 in a 45-week-a-year role.”

Fijian Drua players celebrate after scoring a try against the Chiefs in round fourCredit: Getty

Throughout the conversation, Byrne’s desperation for the Drua to compete with the best of Super Rugby is palpable, not just at home where they are notoriously difficult to beat.

Leaving the coffee shop, Byrne talks about the coconut sellers on the pavement and the huge struggle that most Fijians face every day, especially as parts of the country grapples with floods.

Most Drua players still live in their villages, tightly bound within communities and giving everyone they grew up with a tangible idea of Fijian excellence on the elite stage. Byrne is grateful he has been given a chance to learn from his players as much as he has taught them.

“I wished I’d had this experience earlier in my career because what it’s done is it’s given me [clarity of] what the game is all about,” Byrne said.

“When I was a young guy I was anal about performance, when I was a young coach, I was anal about performance.

“Coming here helped me to understand that performance is a byproduct of the emotional and human part of the game.

“I wish I had the capability to see that when I was a younger player and a younger person, I think I would have enjoyed a lot more years of my career.”

Jonathan Drennan travelled to Fiji as a guest of Rugby Australia.

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