Fiji at the Rugby League World Cup

About Fiji in rugby league

The Bati made an immediate impression on their 1995 World Cup debut, thrashing South Africa 52-6 in their opening match, and have since reached the World Cup semi-finals three times (2008, 2013, 2017) — including a famous 4-2 upset of New Zealand in the 2017 quarter-final, one of the lowest-scoring and most unlikely results in the tournament's history. The Bati take the field before every match to the hymn 'Noqu Masu' ('My Prayer'), sung by the squad as a pre-match ritual that has become one of the sport's most recognisable customs outside New Zealand's haka. Fiji's rugby league roots date to 1992, and the code produced one of the era's biggest Australian-competition stars in winger Noa Nadruku, who topped the try-scoring charts in the Australian premiership in 1993 after moving to the Canberra Raiders. By late 2025 Fiji ranked 6th in the IRL World Rankings, and the Bati enter the 2026 World Cup grouped with Australia, New Zealand and the Cook Islands in Group A — a genuine test of how far the nation's rise has taken it. Rugby league has been played in Fiji since the early 1990s, growing out of the islands' much longer rugby union tradition, and the national team's colours — white jerseys with the Fijian flag's light blue — echo the country's rugby union kit, underlining just how closely the two rival codes are followed side by side across the islands.

Sources

• Fiji national rugby league team — Wikipedia