Rugby with the Islanders

One of my Christmas pressies last month was Running with the Kenyans by runner and journalist Adharanand Finn who, fascinated by Kenyan domination of the world's biggest road races, packed up his family and moved to the small town of Iten in Kenya, to train alongside Olympic champions and young hopefuls in an attempt to discover their secret.

It's an excellent read (thoroughly recommended) and a fascinating story and it got me thinking firstly about the Warthogs rugby tour to Kenya in 1990 (more of that on another occasion) but also about what the rugby equivalent of this story might be.

For me, the answer would be Rugby with the Islanders, an epic tale of an ageing and overweight former flanker who upped sticks to spend a year living and training in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga to discover the secrets behind the increasing domination of world rugby by players of Pacific Island heritage...