Far reaching consequences of Tongas victory over the Kangaroos ?

[absentee thoughtlord]

Great news as the Tonga win is, we really need to see Fiji or Samoa hot on their heels. 

More competition at the top of the tree would be great news for 2021.

[Heritage XIII]

Actually I think Fiji have a strong side. They finally have a good halves combo which was the missing key. Thoroughly impressed with their win over Samoa. Will have a better idea after the game against PNG.

[jim_57]

9 hours ago, Heritage XIII said:

Actually I think Fiji have a strong side. They finally have a good halves combo which was the missing key. Thoroughly impressed with their win over Samoa. Will have a better idea after the game against PNG.

Fiji with their strongest side on paper are right up there with Tonga in my opinion. They haven't recieved the "Golden Boys" treatment like Tonga have since the 17 World Cup even though they beat the same tier 1 team and made the semis same as Tonga.

Not saying Tonga shouldn't have been guven those oppurtunities but Fiji were sort of just shoved aside even though results indicated they still had a decent claim to being the best Pacific Island team.

Let's not forget this side doesn't have players like Blake, Ravalawa, Montoya, Sims³, Safiti², RCG, Koroisau etc for whatever reasons plus a few in the lower leagues making their way up who will come in to the picture by the 21 World Cup. So they have some depth as well.

[kiwis 13 6]

On 07/11/2019 at 02:19, Tre Cool said:

If there are only 60k Tongans in NZ how the hell do they sell 20k tickets to Tongans for their games?  Surely not 1 in 3 of the Tongan population of NZ is going to the matches.  And I assume not many Tongans fly in for matches for economic reasons. Or are there more people in NZ of Tongan heritage that aren't counted in this figure?

Theres 60 000 people who Identify as being Ethnically Tongan or having some Tongan hertiage in New Zealand according to NZ census data and 22 000 were born in Tonga and 48 000 were born in NZ. 50,000 of that number live in Auckland so yeah roughly 2 out of every 5 people from the Auckland Tongan community were at Eden Park. 

[Copa]

On 07/11/2019 at 00:19, Tre Cool said:

If there are only 60k Tongans in NZ how the hell do they sell 20k tickets to Tongans for their games?  Surely not 1 in 3 of the Tongan population of NZ is going to the matches.  And I assume not many Tongans fly in for matches for economic reasons. Or are there more people in NZ of Tongan heritage that aren't counted in this figure?

I’ve known some Tongans who have flown from Australia to NZ for previous matches.