Last Thursday afternoon at the Goat Island Cafe (second floor of Sadie’s by the Sea Restaurant), the American Samoa Rugby Union president, as well as the union body which consists of representatives of the registered rugby clubs in American Samoa that are under the ASRU label – met with Bruce Cook of the Federation of Oceania Rugby Union (FORU) to discuss the growth of the ASRU in the International Rugby Union (IRU) and FORU — as a team.

During the meeting, Cook noted that American Samoa's Talavalu team is meeting every requirement and criteria that FORU and the IRB has in standards. "I would like to acknowledge and compliment your coaches and players for their work, and I am proud to say now that they were an outstanding group of young people."

He added, “They represented your country extremely well, they were a good bunch of people who did everything they needed to do and more, they displayed core values of the game, and I believe that Fata was leading that group. We saw that whatever he said, went, and this was just outstanding leadership and management that guided your team here in American Samoa. Outstanding.”

The discussion of the sport of rugby in American Samoa and its progression also touched base on key components of how to promote rugby in the territory, how to help it become as popular as American football – which a majority of the local athletic youth leans towards.

ASRU Chairman Togiola Tulafono was present at the meeting, and he brought up ideas for discussion, as to how the union can lure the youth of American Samoa to play rugby and look into the sport as a future career. Tulafono compared rugby to American football and how the youth of American Samoa are looking at a step by step advancement into making it a career.

“A majority of these young athletes who are taking football seriously have already seen the accomplishments and its rewards. In football, they have the opportunity to earn athletic scholarships to colleges in the United States, which will guide them into becoming professionals."

He added, "Football already has its prep system pat down — that the goal of all this — is to make it to the NFL, where the money is at, and obviously, every Polynesian playing in the NFL are making a lot of money, this is the dream that every Samoan kid playing football is after."

In rugby, he said, "This is also a dream for me in leading the ASRU especially our Talavalu team. If we get at least one player on our Talavalu team signed or contracted to those big club teams around the world that can pay a lot of money, I believe I will be the happiest man alive, because I know that the hard work paid off, and this will be the beginning of a second system of athletic career opportunities that the youth of American Samoa will look into chasing.”

Ideas were also shared on the floor for discussion from members of the board or representatives of the local clubs, where some said that the lack of the sport in American Samoa is because there aren't a lot of fields for the the sport to be played.

A majority of the youth have to travel to other villages that have fields to play and join their team – Samoan parents have a hard time giving permission to their kids to go elsewhere just to play because they aren't supervised by the parents themselves.

Most participating members brought up the idea of working together with the village leaders and having them supervise, manage, and promote the sport of rugby in their villages to the youth, solely for fitness purposes and promoting the sport within the village.

The ideas and strategies discussed in this meeting were well received by FORU representative Bruce Cook, and their discussion of ideas to promote the sport of rugby in American Samoa will continue at a later time, he said.