What happened to Wallis and Futuna?

Contributing writer Adam Beaumont analyses the state of football in Wallis and Futuna, one of Oceania’s smallest territories.

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The tiny French Pacific territory of Wallis and Futuna is the site of one of the most extraordinary stories in football history and remains a mystery to this day.

As a national team they were fairly active, appearing in 6 Pacific Games and having some pretty good results against the usual qualifying teams (American Samoa, Samoa, Cook Islands and Tonga). However, despite some encouraging signs, the sport seems to have collapsed on the islands, with their national team not having appeared since 1995 and very limited evidence of a local football movement. So, what happened?

Introduction to Wallis and Futuna Islands

The territory of Wallis and Futuna consists mainly of 3 islands between Samoa and Fiji. These islands are Wallis, Futuna and Alofi, as well as many smaller islands around Wallis. Wallis is about 140 miles from the other two islands, and next to Futuna is the almost uninhabited Alofi. Wallis and the surrounding islands are divided into 3 kingdoms, the Kingdom of Uvea, Sigaf and Alo, which divide Futuna (Alofi belongs to Alo). They became a French protectorate in the mid-19th century before being formally annexed in 1917. They were originally part of New Caledonia, separated in 1961, and later transformed into an overseas collective in 2003.

With a population of around 11,000, Wallis and Futuna is a very small member of OFC or FIFA, comparable to associate member Tuvalu and full member Cook Islands. Due to a large diaspora in New Caledonia (around 21,000) and a smaller diaspora in metropolitan France, Wallis and Futuna’s population size is higher than Tuvalu’s, but lower than other OFC members or associate members (the Cook Islands has a much larger diaspora). Looking at the broader breakdown, Wallis and Futuna’s population size is at the lowest end of FIFA’s membership, comparable to countries such as San Marino, but higher than Montserrat.

What is their football history?

As with other French territories, football was introduced by colonists. However, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact time when the sport began in these islands. Their representative team was indeed active in the 1960s, and they first appeared at the 1966 South Pacific Games, but they failed to achieve good results in both tournaments and they did not return to the field for more than ten years.

They returned in 1979 with 12 teams, which is still the largest ever!^nd Wallis and Futuna entered the group as a 3-team group, opening with a 0-6 defeat to the Solomon Islands. However, the match gave them confidence as their second match would be against Samoa (then Western Samoa) as their opponents had conceded 12 goals to the same opposition. The 3-1 win ensured their progression, although they would go on to take on hosts Fiji. Despite reaching the quarter-finals, they were not rated highly, with the Papua New Guinea Post stating that “Fiji had made Wallis and Futuna lambs to the slaughter”. The 0-5 defeat proved that the Fijians had indeed gone too far, but it was far from the most lopsided scoreline of the Games.

They subsequently participated in four more full Games, until their last (so far) in 1995. However, they did not participate in the 1981 or 1993 Mini Games football tournaments.

In 1983, they replicated their previous success, losing 4-0 to big brother New Caledonia in the quarter-finals. However, their group stage was successful, winning two of their three games and finishing top of their group. The group was a weak one, consisting of Samoa and Tonga, and American Samoa opened things up by beating the French islanders. A narrow win over Samoa and an easy win over Tonga, combined with results elsewhere, was enough for them.

However, after this point, the situation deteriorated. Although they eventually^day In 1987, there were only 6 teams. The team they beat was American Samoa, they won 5-1, which was also the only goal Samoa scored in these Olympics… Otherwise, their other games, while not too bad, were also pretty easy opponents.

1991 and 1995 were the last two editions of the region’s football tournament, and they were also their worst performances. In 1991, they played in a strong group, but they only scored one goal in three games and conceded 13 goals. In 1995, they also lost all four games, with a narrow 2-1 win over the Cook Islands being the only bright spot, and other than that, they lost three games, each of which conceded more than 10 goals.

Sources on the island said a sweeping administrative overhaul at the time removed coaches from the sport and reorganized it into an office position. This was a severe blow to football. In the same decade, two more major blows occurred. First, Guam would not host a football championship at the 1999 South Pacific Games, despite having three years of full membership of the Asian Football Confederation and FIFA. Second, rugby union would no longer be a core sport of the Pacific Games, replaced by the smaller sport of rugby sevens.

Although full-sized rugby union had been played between 1963 and 1995, it was unpopular and had few participants. Wallis and Futuna had competed in the early games but stopped playing, and similar behaviour was common. The smaller squads required for rugby sevens made it easier and cheaper for countries to compete, with the inaugural tournament featuring 10 teams, far more than the two teams in full-sized rugby union in 1995. Wallis and Futuna had played rugby union in 1966, 1969, 1971 and 1979, and the more accessible version of the sport they had initially enjoyed was probably the death knell for their representation of football.

It is easy to see, therefore, how football was left aside, despite the extremely limited public evidence. The next explicit mention of football was in 2009, when rugby publicly took the crown of sport on the island. At the time, OFC Secretary Tai Nicholas admitted that the federation had attempted to contact Wallis and Futuna regarding football and possible associate membership. However, with no extant phone number, they were unable to make contact, and there is no further record of any attempt to make contact, or even what state football was in on the island at the time.

Wallis and Futuna rugby, on the other hand, has gone from strength to strength. Their results were pretty poor to begin with, consistently finishing at the bottom of the Pacific Games, but this helped drive other participation. France at some point began to take notice of rugby’s popularity on the islands and how they could benefit from it. Players with island ancestry were given their first crack at playing time in 2008 (some may have gotten their first crack earlier), and New Caledonian rugby is also dominated by Wallis and Futuna immigrants. The current French rugby team uses several players who are either directly from the islands or are descendants of islanders, and this close connection only strengthens rugby’s stranglehold on the sport locally.

Today, football is largely gone, with some 11-a-side games remaining as of 2015 and vague evidence of 7-a-side games in 2017. AJFU, a youth football association based only in Uvea, was also formed in 2017. The AJFU states that football and futsal are “recovering”, and formally linked to the wider French sports body (UFOLEP) in 2020. Membership remains limited, with other sources stating that by 2024 “there will not be much football on the island”.

in conclusion

There are many factors that have contributed to the decline of football on the islands: sparse population, the popularity of rugby, changes in administration and the unfortunate timing of tournaments. As with its Polynesian cousin, rugby dominates on the islands and the chances of football returning seem limited.

As modern society slowly progressed, it seemed that football would remain a niche sport, but Wallis and Fortuna’s chance at the wider footballing landscape had long passed.

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This article was written by Adam Beaumont. You can find Adam on Twitter.

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