Analysis – It’s not often you can feel when history is happening right around you but that is what happens when Samoa meets Tonga.
The two island nations met in the most eagerly anticipated clash of the Rugby League World Cup and in the end it was Tonga who claimed the honours with a 20-18 victory.
It sets up two classic semi-finals, where Samoa will play Australia and Tonga take on New Zealand, but that feels secondary to what happened at Parramatta on Sunday.
It took everything Tonga had and then it took a little more, with the result in the balance until the final minute of a contest that was fuelled by the power of the past and teased a golden vision of tomorrow.
As State of Origin once changed the sport by creating matches that feel as big as rugby league ever can, games like this prove Samoa and Tonga can do the same.
It can be the Origin of the new century, a rivalry without end that makes itself anew every year as a date every fan – Samoan, Tongan and otherwise, rusted-on and casual – can circle on the calendar as one of rugby league’s biggest nights.
It can fill stadiums as easily as it does hearts. The crowd for this one was the highest for any sporting event at the new Parramatta Stadium and would have eclipsed last year’s Lang Park total of 45,000 if only the place was bigger.
It draws in eyeballs, demands attention and adds zeroes to television deals – which means it can turn a profit, In a world where games are reduced to content on a balance sheet, that alone makes the case for more.
This was a match that delivered on its promises of blood and fire and speed and craft, and it was right that it felt timeless because rugby league is just the newest framework for something that has been happening for centuries.
What happens on the field and in the stands is the expression of a relationship that has existed between Tonga and Samoa since before either had written word.
It was already old when the colonisers came, and there are moments you can feel its power so fully and clearly you may as well be able to reach out and touch it.
It was in the steel eyes of Tim Lafai, the retired Samoan legend who grew up in a house with walls, as he led the team out dressed in traditional garb.
It was in the sound of the anthems, the notes that rose and the tears that flowed and the flags that flew, and the carnivore roaring of the cultural challenges.
It was in the ferocious tackling, as both teams dished out hits that would scare a starving dog off a meat truck. Just watching was enough to wake up with bruises in the morning.
Jarome Luai’s effort to fight well out of his weight class and pop Demitric Vaimauga was the pick of a brutal bunch but Vaimauga’s own effort on Spencer Leniu in the second half was near as thunderous.
Most of all, it was in the way this game felt like it was on the edge of a knife as time ran down.
Both teams were bound to play again next week, but for brief moments it seemed like tomorrow wouldn’t exist for whoever end up on the wrong end of things – because they would not lose a game, but a part of themselves.
Samoa’s speed put them ahead, and they seemed to be riding home the stronger, only for Tonga’s power to show one last time as Addin Fonua-Blake snake-hipped past Leniu for the winning try.
A rematch in the World Cup final is possible, even as both teams are likely outsiders, but regardless this has to happen again soon. People want this and supply must meet demand.
Finding room for international football is difficult given the bloated club season but the possibilities of regular Tonga-Samoa matches feel endless, not just regarding what can happen but where it can happen.
This is a show that can play on the road – it electrifies not just in the old strongholds of Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland or new enclaves like Melbourne, but far beyond.
This game can go to so many places because it can go anywhere the Pasifika diaspora has found itself and, if rugby league wants a way into America that’s more than Aussies heading over for the punt and the piss, this is it.
There were pre-game parades as far afield as Houston, Salt Lake City and San Francisco as the Tongan and Samoa communities bolted speakers and flags to their cars and let the Yanks know what was going down on the far side of the world.
They will do it every time because the depth of love for their people is endless and while both teams have evolved to the point where any game they play is a fair event, when they are together a special kind of alchemy occurs.
For some of the players it is bigger than a grand final, and any time you have that kind of emotional investment in this kind of spectacle at this scale it’s a sin if you don’t do it all the time.
An annual game would be a start. A three-match series in regular intervals would be better. They are ready to come, so get to building it.
What Samoa and Tonga have together goes beyond this sport. These games are just the newest spin on an old story.
But what a story it is, and rugby league must find a way to tell it as many times as possible.
