Manuma Samoa is a professional

rugby union Rugby union football, commonly known simply as rugby union in English-speaking countries and rugby 15/XV in non-English-speaking world, Anglophone Europe, or often just rugby, is a Contact sport#Terminology, close-contact team sport that orig ...

team based in

Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa and known until 1997 as Western Samoa, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania, in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu), two smaller, inhabited ...

that plays in the Global Rapid Rugby competition. Founded in 2019 as Kagifa Samoa, the team is backed by the

Samoa Rugby Union Rugby Samoa () is the governing body of the sport of rugby union in Samoa. Founded as the ''Apia Rugby Union'' in 1924, it was affiliated to the New Zealand Rugby Football Union the same year.Jones, p10 It joined the International Rugby Board as ...

Name and logo

Manuma, in Samoan, refers to the many-colored fruit dove (''Ptilinopus perousii''), a small dove found in that country. The team logo includes the head of a manuma bird in profile beneath the

Southern Cross CRUX is a lightweight x86-64 Linux distribution targeted at experienced Linux users and delivered by a tar.gz-based package system with BSD-style initscripts. It is not based on any other Linux distribution. It also utilizes a ports system to ...

in white on a blue background.

History

Kagifa Samoa

The Kagifa Samoa team was established in 2019 and competed in the Pacific Showcase series during the inaugural year of Global Rapid Rugby. In Samoan colloquial speech, a kagifa refers to an enormous wild fish or shark that wreaked havoc in Polynesian mythical legend, and which is more formally referred to as tanifa. The team was backed by Pacific Sports International in partnership with the

. The 2019 squad included Samoan-based players, Tongans, Fijians and New Zealanders as well as Samoan-eligible players based in Australia and New Zealand.

Manuma Samoa

The team was renamed Manuma Samoa with the backing of the Samoa Rugby Union for the 2020 Rapid Rugby season.

Home field

Manuma Samoa plays home games at Apia Park Stadium. Due to construction at Apia Park in 2019 for the

Pacific Games The Pacific Games (French: Jeux du Pacifique), is a continent, continental multi-sport event held every four years among athletes from Oceania. The inaugural Games took place in 1963 South Pacific Games, 1963 in Suva, Fiji, and most recently i ...

, the team's home matches for the Rapid Rugby Pacific Showcase were moved to Pukekohe Stadium in

Auckland Auckland ( ; ) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. It has an urban population of about It is located in the greater Auckland Region, the area governed by Auckland Council, which includes outlying rural areas and ...

and

Ballymore Stadium Ballymore is a rugby union stadium situated in Herston, a suburb of Brisbane, Australia. It is the headquarters of Queensland Rugby Union and was the home ground of the Brisbane City team in the National Rugby Championship, until the league's ...

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

Squad

The Manuma squad for the 2020 Global Rapid Rugby season:

Records

Season standings

Global Rapid Rugby Notes:

2019 Rapid Rugby matches in the Pacific showcase.

Head coaches

Darryl Suasua Darryl Bill Suasua (born 6 May 1965) is a New Zealand rugby union coach. He has coached the New Zealand women's national rugby union team and the New Zealand women's national rugby sevens team. Coaching career Suasua was formerly the Head co ...

(2019) *

Brian Lima Brian Pala Lima OM (born 25 January 1972) is a Samoan former rugby union player who was inducted into the IRB Hall of Fame in 2011. He earned the nickname of "The Chiropractor" for his shuddering hits both on and off the pitch that supposedly r ...

(2020)

Captains

* Leon Fukofuka (2019) *

Patrick Fa’apale Patrick Fa'apale (born 3 May 1991) is a rugby union fly-half who plays for Vaiala and Samoa. Fa’apale made his debut for Samoa in 2014 and was part of the squad at the 2015 Rugby World Cup The IRB 2015 Rugby World Cup was the eighth Rugby ...