The coach who guided Fiji to gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics
BEN RYAN
T
HE FIRST time
I saw Viliame – Bill- Mata was at the
Coral Coast Sevens
in Fiji. As I sat by the side
of the field, desperately
trying to find a bit of shade,
I was suddenly given
exactly what I wanted as
he jogged past, casting
his own vast shadow.
That got my attention
and I got as good a view as
I could to watch him play.
Apart from his size, what
grabbed me was how he
glided across the field. He hardly makes
any noise when he runs, making you
feel like someone has temporarily
turned off the sound. His offloading was
way more pragmatic than most Fijians - I think that’s because he played rugby
league when he was younger. In fact, if
we hadn’t seen him in that tournament
and begun the process of getting him
fit and eating right, I imagine the NRL
would have eventually got wind of him.
From the 2014 Wellington leg of the
HSBC World Sevens Series, I picked Bill
mostly on and a little bit off, but I didn’t
pick him for the Hong Kong Sevens in
- He had been struggling with a calf
injury we were certain was caused by
the increase in workload he had when
he came into camp, but the bottom line
was he hadn’t worked hard enough to
get into the shape he needed to be in to
make sure he could do his thing on the
field and get through a tournament
injury-free. In the early days, getting him
through back-to-back training sessions
without breaking down was a rarity.
His dad, Sitiveni, shouted at
me from the stand in Hong Kong
to ask what his son needed to do to get
in the side. I told him Bill needed to work
harder if he was going to maximise his
potential. He took it all on board in a
positive manner and said he would
speak to Bill. That conversation was
followed up with a visit to the village of
the Mata family and, again, the message
was clear: he needed to change his
mindset on training and preparation.
The carrot he had was if he got fit then
I’d pick him. His ability was clear to me;
to the Fijian public it was less obvious
initially. He didn’t have the mid-air
offloads or hitch kick with pirouette that
many did. But for me and the rest of the
management, if he could stay injury-free
before Rio while continuing to get into
shape, then he was on the plane no
matter what the competition.
Bill and Leone Nakarawa swapped in
and out for each other in Rio, and Semi
Kunatani was another who was part of
that forward unit. This year all threeshould be in Japan for the
World Cup as part of the
Flying Fijians squad.
What marks Bill out is
the combination of skills
and ability he has. At over
6ft 5in and 18st 3lb at the
moment, he is a big unit
but he can shift. He has
fantastic acceleration
and we recorded him at
a top speed of around
35kmph when he was at
Rio. He actually avoided
the attentions of Perry
Baker – one of the fastest
wingers in sevens rugby- to score a long-range effort
against the USA in the group stages.
With that acceleration, he’s got lovely
feet and that gets him onto the
‘branches’, not the ‘trunk’, of a tackler.
This is vital as it means he can get his
offload game working. Again, it’s slightly
different to other Fijians as it is more
pragmatic. Of course, he will produce
his fair share of amazing offloads but
his conversion rate for successful ones
is very high and he’s also great at
knowing when not to throw one.
Defensively he’s super solid too, hits
hard but gets to his feet quickly. It means
he is very low in the penalty count.
When you put all of this together,
wrapped around a personality that
seemingly doesn’t worry about pressure,
you get the world-class player he is.
It’s not an exaggeration to say Bill
is the best No 8 in the world at the
moment and by the end of the World
Cup in Japan, he may well have a much
larger fan club across the globe. n
In the clear
Mata breaks
for Edinburgh“Bill is the best No 8 in
the world at the moment”
BEST PLAYERS^100
VILIAME
MATA
P63