Sireli Maqala

Sireli Maqala won an Olympic gold medal with Fiji’s sevens side in Tokyo in 2021 and signed for Bayonne days later. The Fijian Drua also believed they had him for the 2022 Super Rugby season. It took more than two months of legal and public argument before he arrived in the Basque country at the end of October.

He plays centre and wing for Bayonne, is 1.72m and 88kg, and was developed as a fly-half and full-back.

Born and raised in Labasa on Vanua Levu, he played football and rugby as a boy and settled on rugby at Ratu Kadavulevu School. He led them to national schools titles in 2017 and 2018, scoring twice in the 2018 final, and won the Sanix World Youth Tournament in Fukuoka that year, beating Hastings Boys’ High School in the final. He represented Fiji schools on a tour of New Zealand.

He enrolled at the University of the South Pacific in Suva to study land management and left after a semester to play. He won the Skipper Cup with Suva in 2020.

After less than a fortnight settling in he played his first match for Bayonne on 18 November, against Oyonnax, and was in the back line almost immediately. He was part of the side that won Pro D2 that season and went up to the Top 14, and extended twice, first to 2024 and then to 2025.

Fiji capped him at fifteens on 5 November 2022, off the bench against Scotland at Murrayfield. He took silver at the 2022 Commonwealth Games and missed that year’s Sevens World Cup over visa problems.

A sevens player’s footwork in a fifteens midfield. He beats the first defender more often than anyone else in this squad.