FOOTBALL is one of the world’s widely played and watched sport.
Every football player, spectator and football official has an interesting story to tell.
Today, Times Sport will go back and take a look at the history of football in Fiji and how people adopted the foreign sport brought in by the early European settlers in late 1800s.
The Fiji Football Association with Dr.Mohit Prasad of the University of the South Pacific compiled documents regarding the history of football in a book titled “The History of Fiji Football Association 1938-2013”.
Football and rugby are two of the widely talked and debated topics among people during social functions, around the kava sessions, school and workplace.
According to the FIFA.com website, football was started in 1863 in England when rugby and football branched off on their different courses and the football association was formed which became the first governing body.
“Both (rugby and soccer) codes stemmed from a common root and both have a long and intricately branched ancestral tree. A search down the centuries reveal at least half a dozen different games, varying to different degrees, and to which the historical development of football has been traced back. Whether this can be justified in some instances is disputable. Nevertheless, the fact remains that people have enjoyed kicking a ball about for thousands of years and there is absolutely no reason to consider it an aberration of the more ‘natural’ form of playing a ball with the hands,” the website reported.
The game originated from England and made its way to the Pacific and Fiji with the arrival of Europeans in late 1800s. The book The History of Fiji Football Association 1938-2013 says: “The Catholic and Methodist primary schools in the early part of 1990s especially in urban centers like Levuka, Suva, Nadi and Sigatoka among others had integrated schools and football was particularly cross-cultural experience.”
One of the oldest members of the Fiji Football Association, Hari Raj Naicker got involved in football in 1958 when he started playing for the Labasa team before deciding to become an official of the sport. He said for the record it all started in the early 1900s.
“As far as I think soccer begun in the early 1900s in Levuka which was the hub at that time and where the colonial administration was based,” he said.
“They came from England and they were the ones who started soccer. The natives of Fiji also started playing soccer with them.”
The documented information by Dr. Prasad and his team shows football remained a European social or business house sport in the first two decades of 1990s. The Fijian football competitions were organised at the same time as that of European competitions.
According to Wikipedia the Suva Soccer Football Club along with Rewa and Levuka football clubs was believed to be the first clubs formed in 1905 which was made up of European employees of the Government and businesses. A team represented Suva played a match against a team from Nausori. The members of the visiting naval ships also joined in with the local teams.
A team from Suva defeated a team from HMS Powerful 3-1 then four years later a match was played at the old Albert Park in 1914 between a team from Suva and HMS Torch.
“After the formation of teams like Suva and Rewa the association itself took shape in 1938 when the Fiji Football Association was established and thereafter there were four teams associated with Fiji FA and other teams was formed. This is when Fiji Football Association began to grow,” Naicker said.
“A tournament known as the Inter-District tournament used to take place on the Fiji Day weekend.”
The Indian Reform League arranged a league competition for adult teams around Suva in 1928 and a year later they had a successful schools football competition which was played at Albert Park in Suva.
Formation of Fiji FA
The Fiji Football Association has been in existence for 78 years now. The association was formed in 1938 after a lot of hard work. The then vice-president Dwarka Singh was quoted in The Fiji Times saying: “Years of spadework went into getting the association of the ground.”
According to the book the idea of a competition between districts started the organisation and administration of football that developed into the governing body that is now as the Fiji Football Association.
The founding president of Fiji FA from 1938-1940 was A.S Farebrother.
The association members competed for the Lloyd-Farebrother trophy donated by Messrs and Lloyd and Company of Sydney and Farebrother.
The governor of Fiji and the first patron of Fiji Indian Football Association in 1938, Sir Harry Luke, officially opened the tournament.
The Fiji FA that time had the same acronym as FIFA and according to the website FIFA did not have a problem with the name but the organisation were not happy with the word Indian.
“In 1958, there was a rule that the district teams could only have two Asian players and in 1963 the Fiji Football Association was affiliated to FIFA,” Naicker added.
“Fiji was also known as FIFA (Fiji Indian Football Association) and as far as FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) was concerned there could not be any discrimination. Fiji had to remove the word Indian and then they became FFA and if they had not done it then Fiji would have not been affiliated with FIFA.
“Since joining FIFA we are enjoying all the benefits of FIFA in terms of development and assistance which was given to us. If it had not been given to us then we could not have built any of the academies in Ba or Suva. Our coaches and referees are growing.
“Back then there was only one FIFA tournament which was World Cup but now we have competition for under-17, under-20 and the Olympic Games.
“The Inter-District is the oldest tournament and then Battle of the Giants and Fiji FACT were introduced later on. Soccer has become very popular in the school systems and now we have different competitions in the schools, women and age categories taking place,” Naicker said.
“I can still remember the first FIFA development program which took place in 1977. It was the first development program after FIFA president João Havelange took office in 1974 he promised that he would get companies involved and then Adidas and Coca-Cola got into the sport. The development program took place for referees, coaches, administrators and course medicine took place in 1977 and then there were other development programs started to come up and this also included Fiji joining the Oceania Football Confederation. The key people who helped to form the Oceania Football Confederation were late Charlie Dempsey, late Sashi Mahendra Singh and late Saiyad Ahmed Hussein. These three were given the credit to have the OFC formed and now FIFA has also given the recognition.”
In the last 78 years of existence Fiji under-20 had qualified for the FIFA U20 World Cup in New Zealand last year while the Fiji U23 team also qualified for the first time to compete in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, Brazil in August this year.
