Victory for South Africa and a fifth-place finish for Fiji saw the Blitzboks take the 2017-18 Sevens World Series title by just two points. It's all very well being 6'6" and 120-odd kilos, but when you're his size and you're still smashing people around like he does -- then that commands respect. Despite three tournament wins, however, they couldn't defend their championship title. A woman I won't forget If he wanted to play rugby, his mother told him, he would have to make a living out of it. When he's travelling with the team, Tuwai takes his Olympic gold medal with him in his suitcase -- the first and only medal of any kind that Fiji has won at the Games. "The Olympic aftermath was a moment that saw Fiji rejoice and Suva become a cacophony of noise as locals sang songs and thumped spoons against pots. "People who were sitting in wheelchairs, sick men and women in beds -- I took it all round the community," Vualiku recalls after her son had returned from Rio. Renowned 7s coach Sir Gordon Tietjens, who rated Tuwai as the best playmaker in the world, said winning World Rugby 7s … CNN World Rugby went to meet his family. You've got to have ultimate respect for it. "He's not a shouter, he doesn't scream and shout and demand things -- there's other players that I task with that," adds Baber. "I knew I wouldn't worry about food, about clothes. "Tuwai, who used to play rugby with plastic bottles and bundled-up T-shirts on the streets of Newtown, is now a world champion, Olympic champion and, most recently, captain of Fiji's sevens side.

It's a fervor that has long gripped the Pacific Island nation when its team takes the field. "The same Jerry I brought up, the same Jerry that went to New York or Hong Kong, has come back the same Jerry. For families in Newtown, one of the poorest districts on the outskirts Suva, the Fijian capital, rugby boots are expensive. Vodafone Fiji 7s playmaker Jerry Tuwai has a lot more to play for should he be selected for the Rio Olympics team this Saturday. He's the first one with the opposition, win or lose, to go up and shake your hand and say, 'good game.' The men The All Blacks claimed a first tournament victory since March 2016 in Cape Town, Having finished second to New Zealand in last season's overall standings, Australia's women got their campaign off to winning ways by Last year's world champion South Africa started this season as they ended the last. A diminutive figure at 5'7", the first jersey Tuwai wore for a local team flapped around his knees. And Jerry did that for us; for me, my husband and my children. "Humility motivated Tuwai when he laced up his first ever pair of rugby boots a decade ago.It was there when, at the start of his career, he bought a washing machine for his family, and it's there when the final whistle blows on a rugby match thousands of miles from home. But rugby, which he only took up after dropping volleyball aged 18, has provided an answer. "You can see how much he puts his body on the line. Playmaker and possibly the heartbeat of the Fijian 7s side, Jerry Tuwai acknowledged God for his win as the 2019 HSBC World Rugby Men’s Sevens Player of the Year.

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