Power and performance: Fiji rugby’s transition from amateurism to professionalism

This article shows how accounting and rugby have been used as tools of control. It compares the role of accounting in amateur and professional sport, initially analysing the Fiji Rugby Union’s (FRU) internal documents from the period when Fiji was a British colony and rugby was an amateur sport. During this period, the FRU practised rudimentary accounting since it relied primarily on internally-generated funds and therefore had virtually no public accountability. The FRU board emphasized rugby’s core values and downplayed the importance of money. However, in the professional period, donors require more sophisticated financial reporting and auditing to monitor usage of their grants and evaluate the impact of their investments. The FRU has encountered conflict with its donors due to repeated financial losses and alleged mismanagement. This article reveals that those losses originated in the amateur period through diseconomies of scale, inequitable arrangements for international matches and unsustainable funding models. Rather than helping the FRU to address these underlying problems, powerful stakeholders continue using financial resources and governance structures to control and exploit Fiji rugby.