Turns out the English were having a hard time getting people to join the army, apparently (must be all those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) - so they cast their recruiting net over the Islands. The fact so many were good sevens players was incidental, what?
Let's skip past the intriguing concept that serving in the British army can make you English.
It's an extension of the Andy Murray syndrome - when he wins Wimbledon, he's British. When he plays crap, he's from Scotland.
Or, as I once heard a West Indian acquaintance say: 'When we win an Olympic medal, we're English. But riot and chuck a petrol bomb, and we're West Indian."
It's been a national sport in England for various journalists and fans to perpetuate the myth New Zealand scouts scour the Islands for talent. At this stage, we must signal one recent accuracy - Fekitoa was noticed as a teenage member of a Tongan sevens team in New Zealand and offered a scholarship to attend Wesley College. But the Brits would have you believe we tail well-built pregnant mothers, bribe our way into the delivery theatre and spirit away new-borns.
English lock-turned-rugby-writer Paul Ackford wrote in the Daily Telegraph in 2010: "You can sneer as much as you want, pretend that their excellence is born out of the fact there is sod-all else to do in a New Zealand winter, that they've pillaged the Pacific Islands for their talent, that most of their iconic players - Jonah Lomu, Tana Umaga, Carl Hayman - struggled to string two syllables together let alone a sentence, and you would be right. But that doesn't for one micro-second undermine their brilliance. Forget their atrocious record in World Cups. New Zealand are the best, the most compelling side on the planet by a distance."
That's how you do it, you see. You insult their intelligence but oil the blade by praising them for being good at rugby while keeping alive the falsehood that success is built on plundering others.
I love the English (my mum was ... ), lived there for three years and have some great mates there. But they are nationalists par excellence - only they do it by pretending their nationalism is deserved but everyone else's is distasteful.
Someone called Chris Foy, in the Daily Mail in April, decried Bundee Aki's decision to play in Ireland and try for an international jersey there.
"The All Blacks have long since plundered the Pacific Islands, hence the accusations of hypocrisy aimed at Hansen in recent days," he wrote. "Australia have been similarly wide-reaching in their recruitment, while England have gladly accepted imports, without necessarily seeking them."
Everyone else plunders; the English accommodate, far too polite to refuse.
Dylan Cleaver's NZ Herald piece a few months ago was the definitive answer. Of the 1133 All Blacks in 130 years, 32 were born in the Islands. That's two per cent. Eight have come from Fiji, 13 from Samoa, nine from Tonga and two from American Samoa. There have been 22 Australians play for the All Blacks but no one cares about them. Meanwhile, traditional English names such as Tuilagi, Vunipola and others continue to be selected for the Red Rose.
As for Ackford's jibe about a New Zealand winter, it called to mind an ancient diatribe by TV's Alf Garnett, a satirical English bigot who once said something like: "Look at all the countries [of the Empire] we gave away. What we should have done is kept all the rest and give away England. I mean, there's all yer wogs sitting out there in the sun by the bloody oil wells and there's us all over 'ere in the rain and the fog, catchin' colds and bronchitis."
Amen, Alf, amen ...
