Mark Bakewell (Easts) & Tim Lane (Manly) have already overseen positive results with Tonga – seiserphotography.com

by Paul Cook –

Samoa’s recent rise up the IRB world rankings to an all time high of 8th has blazed a trail for their Pacific neighbours in Tonga and Fiji to follow. Blessed with an abundance of natural talent, these rugby mad islands have been hamstrung in the past by a lack of funding and the inevitable player drain overseas as their top stars chase the rewards that simply aren’t available at home. While the IRB have increased their investment in recent years, more is still needed but there are certainly encouraging signs of improvement.

The smallest of the three island nations, Tonga has a population of only 103,000 but 6,560 of those are registered rugby players – that’s over 6% of the country! They carved out their own slice of rugby folklore at the 2011 World Cup, defeating eventual runners-up France in their final group match to pull off possibly the greatest result in the nation’s history.

Like Samoa, they too have continued to raise the bar and push for greater consistency and further improvement since the tournament and High Performance Manager Peter Harding and head coach Mana Otai spread their net across the globe in search of rugby brains to help fuel their progress. Former defence coach for France, Dave Ellis, was recruited alongside two of Australia’s – and the Shute Shield’s – finest coaches in Tim Lane and Mark Bakewell and they took their bow on the recent tour of Europe.

The results were hugely encouraging as the ‘Ikale Tahi’ suffered a narrow 28-23 loss to an improving Italy first up before despatching rankings rivals USA 22-13 a week later. However, it was their 21-15 defeat of Scotland on Tartan soil – a result that caused Scottish coach Andy Robinson to fall on his sword – that really raised the eyebrows and the expectations of what this team could achieve.

It’s not the first time the head coaches of Manly and Eastern Suburbs respectively have been involved on the international scene. Lane represented his country on the field before becoming Rod Macqueen’s assistant in Australia’s 1999 World Cup triumph and he’s also coached in South Africa, France, England and Georgia. He says the Tongan experience is like nothing else. “It’s culturally different. Players had prayer meetings, sang before and after games and at final training sessions etc. They’re a very spiritual group with incredible voices and are very respectful people.”

Head coach Mana Otai at the French training camp

Bakewell has also spent time in the Wallaby camp assisting former head coaches Greg Smith and Eddie Jones as well as current incumbent Robbie Deans with the technical specifics of forward play, also offering the same service to Steve Hansen-era Wales. He too lauded the positive experience and was pleased with the results given the painfully short preparation time.

“Players and staff came from all over the world and we literally went into camp in France one week prior to the Italian test. The players were great in accepting what we were trying to put in place and the staff just got on with their jobs with little fuss, there were no egos just people wanting to see the boys succeed. It was a really refreshing experience and I congratulate all the boys and particularly Peter Harding and Mana Otai who put this team together, they have done a great job.”

With Bakewell helping out the forwards, it was left to Lane to produce some magic from the backs and with the talent at his disposal, it was a task he relished. “We introduced new patterns of play and new defensive structures – it was pretty much a complete change to what they had in the World Cup – but they were very easy to work with and very good athletes. Hopefully, they will get better and better with each performance. I think with more preparation time and a warm up game before the Italy test, we could have won that game as well.”

Elite level rugby, like any professional sport these days, is a results based business but three years out from the next World Cup, teams like Tonga have the chance to redefine their game plans and style of play in the process.  “The big focus was to maintain the IRB ranking, so beating the USA was critical and getting close to Italy and Scotland was necessary”, says Bakewell. “The difficult thing was that we only had ten days to get a new style of play in place with every component starting from scratch, so not getting flustered about the objectives while trying to achieve this was the key.”

While victory over the USA was the minimum requirement for success on the tour, the defeat of Scotland in Aberdeen was a magnificent bonus and a moment to savour for the coaching staff as well as the players. “I’ve had a few good coaching memories”, says Lane, “but to see the joy on the players faces down on the ground at fulltime was incredible. Very memorable.”

The win over Scotland was memorable for both players and coaches

“It was the desire to win that shone through” recalls Bakewell, “across the tour as a whole but particularly versus Scotland. A twenty-three to nine penalty count and three yellow cards and the boys still won – just awesome.”

That success lifted Tonga up to 10th on the IRB rankings, the task now is to maintain the rate of progress and follow Samoa by breaking into the hallowed domain of the big boys. It’s a challenge that the coaches look forward to and with the hope of gaining an extension to their current two year contracts in order to take them into the 2015 World Cup, one that will have a bearing on their international future’s as well.

Bakewell feels that a little more assistance from the governing body of the game is also a vital part in achieving their goals. “The IRB must ensure that clubs do not try and stop players being available for their countries. They must also control the bigger nations from capping Tongan eligible players in Sevens or in one off tests just to stop them being able to play for Tonga and then never picking them again.

“All the Polynesian countries have massive pools of talent and for them to perform better on the international stage, they need as many eligible players playing for them as possible. Tonga can be as good as anyone if they can pick their best team in all the tournaments”.