Rugby World Cup/Pool C/Focus on Samoa: In modern Samoa infants learn to play rugby with plastic water bottles for balls. Earlier generations, suffering from a similar shortage of the real thing, used dried coconut shells. In modern Samoa infants learn to play rugby with plastic water bottles for balls. Earlier generations, suffering from a similar shortage of the real thing, used dried coconut shells.

Plastic bottles are better, according to Phillip Muller, the spokesman for Samoa's World Cup squad, because "you can kick them, and they bounce funny".

The people of Samoa are poor in material things but rich in talent and spirit, as England were forcefully reminded on Sunday. Once missionaries and teachers had introduced the islanders to the game in the early years of the last century, it became an integral part of their culture.

"We use it as a part of the way we educate our children," Muller said yesterday in Brisbane, where the squad were making their final preparations for tomorrow's match against South Africa. "We don't leave our kids idle. Rugby is athletic, it's energetic, it's competitive and it breeds strength of character."

There could be no better setting than Australia, where sport is so much a part of the national self-image, for Samoa to use rugby to remind the world of its existence. Their team's achievement in leading England for more than an hour in Melbourne is being seen as an even greater success than the historic defeat of Wales in Cardiff 12 years ago.

"We all had a gut feeling that we could give it a good go," Peter Fatialofa said yesterday, thinking back to Sunday's match. The captain of the 1991 side, he is one of the selectors of the current squad. "Without being over-confident, we felt that, if everyone played to their potential, we'd come close. Winning would have been a bonus but I think the performance was to let people know that, even though we're struggling, we can still compete with the best."

The fact that Fatialofa has paid his own way to Australia is symbolic of Samoa's struggle. The total budget for their World Cup campaign is about e430,000.

Their fitness coach is also their baggage master and video analyst. If they beat the Springboks tomorrow, Samoa will reach the quarter-finals of the tournament at a time when their overall situation has never been worse. Unless things change, they say, this World Cup may be their last.

And yet, impoverished as they may be, such is the health of the game among Samoans at home and abroad that they are providing a constant stream of talent for others to exploit.

Ever since the 1930s, when the Solomon brothers became the first players of Samoan ancestry to represent New Zealand, the islanders have become used to watching their finest talents pull on the All Black jersey, among them Mils Muliaina, Rodney So'oialo and Tana Umaga of the current squad.

Of Samoa's 178,000 inhabitants, 11,000 are registered players. Many others, however, play the game abroad, where there is money to be earned.

Some of them, professionals with Wasps, Gloucester, Newcastle and Harlequins in England, and with Canterbury and Waikato in New Zealand, would have been selected for the current squad but were prevented from joining it either by economic considerations or by rules that prevent them from reverting to their original nationality.

Samoa would like the International Rugby Board to amend their rules to enable players from the Pacific islands to reclaim their Samoan, Fijian or Tongan nationalities once they are of no further interest to New Zealand and to provide subsidies to compensate their clubs for the loss of their services. But for Fatialofa, who was on less than £8 a day when Samoa stunned Wales 12 years ago and now runs his own piano-moving company, the players should not be thinking about money at all.

"When you get selected to play for your country," he said, "money should never be an issue. If you're selected, you say thank you and go and do it. Now it's 'oh, my club won't release me' or 'I can't afford it; I've got a family'. We've all got families. You hear of a few players ringing up and saying 'I'm available now' but it's too late. You've got to be here from the start.

"Money can't buy what happened in 1991, or in 1995, when we reached the quarter-finals."

That day in Cardiff created the legend of Manu Samoa, nicknamed after the island's term for "warrior". Even to get to the 1991 World Cup Fatialofa and his team-mates had pushed a wheelbarrow around the islands, soliciting donations.

"Tell me what nation has ever had to do that," he said. "Half of us had blisters. And because I was captain, I was doing more running than anybody. But we had the chance to put Samoa on the map."

They are back on the map now, thanks to a team captained by Semo Sititi, their number eight, and coached by John Boe, an All Black tourist, and Michael Jones, an All Black legend. "Samoans have an instinct and a flair for the game," Boe said yesterday. "They have wonderful ball-handling skills and they enjoy the physical side. These people were born to play rugby."

But Boe is well aware that, for all Sunday's euphoria, ultimately they fell short. Tomorrow he will hope that the same sublime skills and freewheeling philosophy will be good enough to dismiss another of the game's traditional giants.

"We're not here to make up the numbers but to compete," he said.

Back home in Samoa further good news would give a lift to a people whose livelihoods have been damaged in recent years by a couple of devastating cyclones, a mysterious crop blight and fish stocks depleted by global warming.

"Now we're stuck with 200 fishing boats and no fish," Fatialofa said. "But Samoans are really good people. When they're knocked down, they get right up and find something else to survive on."

"Samoans are happy people," Boe added. "This is a happy team. And the happier they are, the better they play."

Guardian Service

SAMOA: T Vili; L Fa'atau, R Ropati, B Lima, S Tagicakibau; E Va'a, S So'oialo; K Lealamanua. J Meredith, J Tomuli, O Palepoi, L Lafaiali'i, P Poulus, M Fa'asavalu, S Sititi (capt). Replacements: M Schwalger, T Leupolu, K Viliamu, D Tuiavi'i, D Tyrell, D Rasmussen, D Feaunati.

SOUTH AFRICA: J van der Westhuyzen; A Willemse, J Muller, De Wet Barry, T Delport; D Hougaard, J van der Westhuizen; C Bezuidenhoudt, J Smit, F Rautenbach, B Botha, V Matfield, C Krige (capt), J van Niekerk, J Smith. Replacements: D Coetzee, R Bands, D Rossouw, S Burger, N de Kock, L Koen, J Fourie.

South AfricavSamoa

Brisbane, Saturday, 7.0 a.m.