'It's like an exam' - Sevens great Tomasi Cama's Olympics test

Tomasi Cama has a reputation for being a man of few words, which can make it all the more powerful when he does talk.

The All Blacks sevens great-turned-head coach employed that to the fullest at the team’s recent “culture camp”, where he’s understood to have talked for more than an hour to his team about his background, and his journey.

It’s one worth learning about as the Fijian-born 43-year-old gets set to embark on his first World Series as the team’s head coach, starting in Dubai next month.

There’s a particular focus on this series given what looms next year: The Paris Olympics.

Cama was born and raised in the Fijian village of Sinuvaca on the island of Koro.

It's there he recalls playing rugby from the age of five or six, with his cousins or whoever he could round up.

Those formative years on the island were a huge influence on him.

“You see the elders, how hard they work, there's not a lot when you grow up in the village but you live off the land and the sea, and rely a lot on each other.

“But as a kid growing up we used to have a lot of fun as well.”

Hard work and fun - two concepts that probably sum up the man his former teammate and the team’s most capped player Tim Mikkelson describes as their biggest prankster.

“But that’s the beauty of him”, Mikkelson tells 1News.

“He knows when to switch on and when to switch off.”

It would also be remiss to not mention Cama’s family in his development.

His grandparents helped raise him, and his dad, also Tomasi, is a sevens hero in Fiji from his time as both a player and coach.

The younger Cama laughs when he recalls what were dubbed the “Cama battles” – when son in New Zealand colours would come up against a Fiji side his dad coached.

It’s something that wouldn’t have happened had Cama not made the move to New Zealand chasing an NPC contract, before being shoulder tapped by Gordon Tietjens in the early 2000s.

Not that there was any form of immediate glory.

“I think it was two years - I came to every camp [and] I didn’t get selected.

“It’s tough at the time,” Cama recalls.

That in many ways shaped him too – he was forced to learn about resilience and commitment and would become a star during a golden era of men’s sevens in New Zealand, a team bonded, he says, “by hard work”.

When his playing career came to an end he turned his hand to coaching, an assistant under Clark Laidlaw, who he says taught him more about the power of connection.

But his rugby brain is his alone.

Mikkelson says Cama has the highest sevens IQ of anyone he’s met.

“Sometimes I play the game in my head,” Cama says.

“I look at it like as an exam, you know - you give me questions, I have to answer.

“I think the difference now is how quick you can answer.”

The New Zealand great will be hoping he has plenty of answers come World Series and Olympics time, in the sport where his commitment has never wavered.

“Even if it’s just a man and his dog watching, I'll still give it everything.

“I just love the game.”