Watch every game of the 2025 British & Irish Lions Tour live and on-demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nSwain, Salakaia-Loto and Lefau are all of Samoan heritage – with the two rugby stars excited to lean into their culture for the upcoming fixture.<\/p>\n
“My mum’s Samoan and my dad’s Australian. It’s special for me to represent my mum’s heritage. Not many people know that I am Samoan,” Swain said to reporters on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“She made a massive sacrifice coming over from Samoa to New Zealand when she was 18. That’s something that I want to pass back to her and my kids as well and my family.<\/p>\n
“A lot of guys are centralised in that. We have that same feeling. We want to set our families up and represent our heritage because they’ve done massive things for us. It’s pretty special that we all get to do it together.”<\/p>\n
“For myself, to represent the people that have worked for us, our families, my parents, grandparents, for my kids as well. I understand that whilst we live in Australia, we’re very much proud to be Samoans,” Salakaia-Loto added.<\/p>\n
“We’re proud of our heritage. Very grateful and blessed that this team allows for that. It’s not often you get to do that sort of thing.”<\/p>\n
For Lefau, coming from an AFL background, the chance to join a rugby training session and see the exchange of learning and culture in action between all the players has been a joyful experience.<\/p>\n
“It’s just been awesome,” the Richmond star said.<\/p>\n
“It’s an awesome opportunity to come down and watch the boys and see the First Nations and Pasifika cultures come together and see the boys having a laugh. It’s something that I think is missing in the AFL.<\/p>\n
“Hopefully, that can change in the future soon. It’s just awesome to come down here and see the boys, how close they can already get with a short time to get ready for the game. It’s just awesome, man.”<\/p>\n
While Lefau stopped short of teasing a possible code swap, he wasn’t afraid to offer some potential ideas to help the squad out.<\/p>\n
“I think one thing I could maybe teach the boys is just how to run,” Lefau laughed.<\/p>\n
“Apparently that’s a quite weird thing, just hearing how much we run in the sport of AFL\u2026 Our game’s on such a bigger field.<\/p>\n
“It’s 360 as well so you’ve got to look around everywhere as opposed to everyone’s lining up in front of you. Just the physicality difference, I suppose. <\/p>\n
“Ours is maybe just a tiny bit more technical as we’re right next to you. Here you can gain some momentum coming up, charging forward and things like that. <\/p>\n
“It’s hard. I love playing both sports…. It’s just good to see the boys just having fun. That’s what it’s about. That’s what sport does.<\/p>\n
“It’s a major tool in bringing people together. That’s what the opportunity presents here with this team. I just love being here and watching the boys go about it. I’m keen to watch them on Tuesday.”<\/p>\n
One of the aspects of the training has been the transfer of culture, which has come with learning about customs and traditions players were previously not familiar with. <\/p>\n
With that, the onus has come with a desire to create a style of game in the spirit of First Nations and Pasifika peoples.<\/p>\n
“Probably the Indigenous culture,” Salakaia-Loto said when asked about the surprise learnings from the week so far. <\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, it’s probably something that’s not taught or spoken about as much as it probably should be. <\/p>\n
“What they’ve had to go through in their culture, how special it is, is something that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. I’m sure the other boys have probably had the same thing. It’s important that we celebrate them.”<\/p>\n
“I think just with the short time frame that we have, it’s just coming together and being ourselves,” Swain added.<\/p>\n
“So many people say the Pacific plays with flair. The Indigenous boys are so skilful.<\/p>\n
“Let’s just go out there and be ourselves. Express ourselves freely, but we have a structure. We’ve got to play to our structure, but obviously that allows us to play with freedom. It’s been ripping into that.”<\/p>\n
For Swain and Salakaia-Loto, the chance to also play brings an opportunity to potentially catch the eye of Joe Schmidt, with both featuring recently in the Wallabies squads.<\/p>\n
However, Salakaia-Loto admitted the desire to represent their culture will be the far bigger motivator come Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
“[It’s] a little bit of motivation,” Salakaia-Loto responded when asked about Wallabies selection.<\/p>\n
“I think that’s probably taking a back seat in terms of this week. I’m just enjoying being able to match the boys and really celebrate our culture.<\/p>\n
For some, it’s getting back in touch with their culture. For others, it’s sharing what they know with some of the boys. <\/p>\n
“There’s a little bit of motivation, but I think the motivation for us is to make sure that this team isn’t the last of its kind. We can put a performance in to make sure it comes back.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chance to represent a side that celebrates cultural heritage is chance that doesn’t come along for any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,2634,760,85,2500],"class_list":["post-1807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-first-nations-pasifika","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-wallabies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}