Alivereti Raka

Raka is the Fijian word for rugby. Alivereti Raka has now scored a hundred tries for one club, which makes the name look less like a coincidence and more like an instruction.

He got there in late September 2025, with a brace against Racing 92 — his 100th and 101st in 177 matches for Clermont. Only André Dubertrand, Philippe Saint-André, Aurélien Rougerie and Napolioni Nalaga had done it before him.

He is a left wing, 1.89m, and quick in a way that shows up on a stopwatch: his speed has been extrapolated to a 10.20-second 100 metres.

He arrived from the Nadroga academy in Fiji in November 2014, under the same arrangement that had already brought them Nalaga, Noa Nakaitaci and Peceli Yato. He debuted at Oyonnax in September 2015 and scored. Then eight tries in nine games, including two against Toulouse.

The injuries have been brutal and badly timed. A shoulder problem wrote off most of 2016-17 until November. On 17 December 2017, against Saracens in Europe, he wrecked a knee and lost the rest of a season in which he had already scored thirteen tries in eleven matches.

In between he won a French championship. Nakaitaci was injured before the 2017 final, Raka came into the side and scored Clermont’s only first-half try as they beat Toulon. The Challenge Cup followed in 2019. In 2018-19 rugbyrama.fr’s readers voted him the Top 14‘s best left wing.

Fiji wanted him. He turned down John McKee’s approach for the 2017 November Tests, got a French passport in November 2018, and was named in France’s 31-man World Cup squad the following June. His first start for France, against Scotland on 17 August 2019, brought a try after one minute and 42 seconds. He scored against the United States at the World Cup from a Camille Lopez cross-kick, and was man of the match against Tonga. Five caps, all starts, and nothing since.

He finishes. That is the job and he has done it for a decade. What he does not do is chase back, and Clermont have always accepted the trade.