Moape deserves benefit of doubt

Let's not get carried away and sentence Moape Ravuvu to the guillotine for leaving the Hong Kong sevens team in the lurch.

The knee-jerk reaction, of course, was to brand him as a time-server who made the most of his chance in Hong Kong before de-camping.

Moape is not the first Hong Kong rugby player to go AWOL. But he is indeed the most valuable player to do so. No wonder the reaction amongst many was to instantly label him as a deserter.

Take a deep breath and consider the circumstances. His wife is six months pregnant and he has been away from her ever since they got married. She was in Hong Kong briefly, but was unhappy. Which pregnant woman would be happy if she had to live in a strange place and in a stranger's apartment without family or friends around her? Without friends, Hong Kong can be a bleak place. And without the support of family, which in Fiji is very close-knit, it becomes worse. Moape and his wife would have felt it keenly as they come from a society based on old-fashioned values. His wife's pregnancy would have just exaggerated his homesickness.

Although Moape was promised many things when he came to Hong Kong, most of these promises never materialised. Kowloon, the club he joined initially, failed to find him a place to live or even a decent job.

Maybe language barriers and cultural differences made it difficult for him to mix with the social set-up in town. He mostly kept to himself. Left alone, he could have wondered what the hell he was doing in Hong Kong.