Peniasi Dakuwaqa

On 24 February 2024, in the derby against Racing 92, Peniasi Dakuwaqa ran 127 metres to score. It was voted the Top 14 try of the season. Four years before that he had won the Cook Islands 100 metres in 10.42 seconds.

Wing at Stade Français, 1.86m and 95kg, and 29 years old.

Nagado, a village at Nadi in the north-west of Viti Levu, is where he learned the game. He never played on a Saturday as a boy: his grandfather was a Seventh-day Adventist and the rule held.

What followed was not a pathway. Amateur rugby in every code and format he could find — sevens, nines, league, union — split between Fiji and the Cook Islands, where he moved to join his wife. The sprint title came out of that period too.

Sireli Bobo recommended him to Paris in the autumn of 2022. The first months were spent on the bench or in the stand. His first try came in the Challenge Cup against Benetton in January 2023, a fifty-metre run in which he stepped past Edoardo Padovani, and his real chance came a month later when Sione Tui was hurt in the first half against Montpellier. He signed a professional contract to 2026 the following day.

Fiji capped him on 5 July 2024 against Georgia and he scored twice in a 21-12 win.

Karim Ghezal left him out of the squad entirely for the first three rounds of 2024-25. He scored against Pau and against Montpellier and took his starting place back. That has been the shape of it throughout: nobody has handed him anything, and every time he has been left out he has scored his way back in.