page_title: Pacific Islanders rugby union team
section_title: Celtic Nations 2006
hierarchical_section_title: Pacific Islanders rugby union team / History / Celtic Nations 2006
caption_attribution_description: Pacific Islanders v Scotland @ Murrayfield; the 'sipi-tau' dance is performed by the Pacific Islanders team before the game.
context_page_description: The Pacific Islanders was a combined international rugby union team that played from 2004 to 2008. It represented Fiji, Samoa and Tonga; Niue and the Cook Islands also supplied players to the squad for the Pacific Islanders' tour in 2004, despite not being members of the Pacific Tri-Nations competition. The team did not play at Rugby World Cups, where each of the nations continued to represent themselves.
context_section_description: As the individual nations were primarily concerned with qualifying for the next World Cup the Islanders did not tour again until 2006.  Scheduled matches against Italy and New Zealand in June 2006 did not take place, but they undertook a Northern Hemisphere tour in late 2006 with matches against Scotland, Wales and Ireland.  PIRA had ruled in July 2006 that the team selected for that year's tour to Great Britain and Ireland would consist only of players who had previously played for Fiji, Manu Samoa or Tonga. This was intended to ensure that the Pacific Islanders team serves to develop players for the island nations only. Notably, two players on the 2004 tour, Sione Lauaki and Sitiveni Sivivatu (the latter the Islanders' leading scorer on that tour), went on to play for the All Blacks. During that tour, they were the last opponents of Ireland at their traditional home of Lansdowne Road before its redevelopment into a modern all-seater stadium.  The Pacific Islanders were beaten in all three matches.
caption: The Pacific Islanders before their match against Scotland
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