SuperUser Account / Thursday, April 4, 2019 / Categories: News, Blogs Players of Island Heritage It is apparent that players of Pacific Island heritage add a lot to our national game. It is also apparent that they provide specific skills, and tend to dominate certain positions in our game. These players are generally more explosive and instinctive and often provide more strength. It's a sensitive subject to classify players in this way. But the facts reinforce these differences. Of all of the All Black players used in the wing position since professionalism 42% have come from an Island heritage. Yet, at halfback or first-five this rate is about 6%. And the other popular positions are fairly predictable - the centre positions, No.8, blindside and prop are all well above the average. From the data, probably only the locking position comes as some surprise.It was Chris Laidlaw who identified this subject in his book 'Somebody Stole My Game'. As a former Race Relations Conciliator he presented the idea that Island players offered particular skills to our game in a very sensitive way. We just wanted to back up that logic with the facts.Methodology: We extracted a list of unique starting players per position since 1996, comparing the number of Island players in that position from the total list of starting players. This is not intended to be a scientific study. We have tried to identify players with a direct Pacific Island heritage only (one generation). But by applying it consistently, and over the sizable sample, the data still provides an accurate insight over the different positions. Previous Article All Black Debutants Next Article Hansen's Replacements Print 193