KEY POINTS:
It's easy to focus on statistical anomaly and ponder how it might have come about. In a country where six per cent of the population are of Pacific Island descent, it's incredible that the same group accounts for more than 30 per cent of New Zealand's professional rugby players.
This time 10 years ago there were 25 players of Pacific Island descent contracted to play for New Zealand's Super 12 franchises. In 2007, 50 of the 162 contracted players can trace their roots to either Fiji, Samoa or Tonga.
It's a massive over-representation not just in terms of numbers but also in terms of impact.
Every year it seems the stars that shine brightest are those with genetic input from Pasifika.
In 2003, Ma'a Nonu and Joe Rokocoko showed their potential as global superstars with explosive blasts that left some opponents flattened and others coughing dust. In 2004, Sione Lauaki and Sitiveni Sivivatu put on a show to remember first with the Chiefs then with the combined Islands side. Chris Masoe and Neemia Tialata were the finds of 2005 and this year David Smith, Lelia Masaga and Isaia Toeava are the players that have everyone talking.
The growing dominance of Polynesian athletes could become slap-in-the-face obvious at the World Cup. No doubt coach Graham Henry will mix and match his options in the early rounds and could select a starting XV that includes John Afoa, Keven Mealamu, Tialata, Jerry Collins, Masoe, Rodney So'oialo, Nonu, Toeava, Sivivatu, Rokocoko and Mils Muliaina.
Figures compiled by Auckland Rugby point towards the Polynesian dominance becoming greater. Around 9000 of the roughly 21,000 players in Auckland are Polynesian - making Pacific Islanders the most significant ethnic group.
Prod those numbers further and they reveal that Polynesians account for almost 60 per cent of all players in the region aged 12 and over and almost 70 per cent of those playing senior rugby.
It's not inconceivable that come the 2011 World Cup, New Zealand as hosts kick-off the first game with a match-day 22 that consists solely of players who come from a Pacific Island background.
That's a far cry from where things were in 1970 when Bryan Williams put himself on the All Black wing and Samoa on the world map.
Since Williams cut his irrepressible swathe, the number of Pacific Island peoples living in New Zealand has increased about five-fold. The number of Pacific Islanders playing for the All Blacks, though, has increased about 10-fold - with the most dramatic growth in representation coming in the last 10 years.
That, according to former All Black fitness trainer Jim Blair, is due to a combination of factors. Rugby's continued evolution makes it ever more a high-impact, collision sport played in explosive bursts.
Significant numbers of Pacific Islanders possess fast-twitch muscle which makes them genetically predisposed towards building mass around the critical joints and being quick over short distances. It is an explosive game and the Islands produce huge numbers of explosive athletes.
Blair, though, feels it is not just inherent physical advantages distorting the statistics. "The influence of affluence comes into play," he says.
"Since the game went professional rugby has become a career path. Success in professional sport has always been more about attitude than ability.
"For want of a better term, professional sport has always been attractive to those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. American Football has a large number of players of African heritage who have used football as way out of the ghetto. When I was growing up in Scotland playing football, it was always the boys from the east end of the city who did well - as that was their way out.
"Now that money is on offer, rugby opens up a way for people to make a success of themselves."
But it is not just the speed and volume of the influx of Polynesian athletes that has helped New Zealand sit atop the rugby world.
Other nations have access to deep and varied gene pools that create platforms for sporting success. Europe's thirst for trade and power in the Elizabethan and Georgian eras saw the major nations conquer almost every corner of the globe.
The sea-faring Dutch helped themselves to Surinam and Guyana, the French controlled most of North Africa and the British just about everything else. The upshot of these ventures impacted on football fields more than 300 years later. Mother countries opened their doors and by the 1970s most of Europe was flooded with peoples from their former colonies.
The Dutch in particular had access to some sublime footballing talent but World Cup after World Cup they were derailed by racial rifts.
The Dutch have not been alone in contending with racism. John Barnes, one of the first black players to make his mark in the top flight of English football, had bananas thrown at him early on in his career, while racist chanting still reverberates round Spanish stadiums.
As a consequence, no major European country has been able to harness the true power of its genetic base.
The story is entirely different in New Zealand where not once has the melting pot bubbled over.
"I don't know of one incident of a racial nature," says Rob Nichol, head of New Zealand's Rugby Players Association. "Nothing has been reported and we don't know of anything on an anecdotal basis. Rugby in New Zealand is probably unique in that regard."
Even before Nichol's time in the professional era, it seems that rugby in New Zealand practiced a code of equality.
Williams, one of the first players from Pacific Island descent to storm New Zealand rugby, says: "I never felt I was subjected to any abuse. Every now and again someone might call me a black so-and-so but it was heat of the moment stuff.
"I think the opposite was true - that rugby helped break down barriers in this country and helped Pacific Islanders gain respect and acceptance. Growing up here that time we were never encouraged to display our culture. But rugby was a way in which we could express ourselves.
"That's the beauty of rugby. It has always been an egalitarian sport, accepting of different physiques, religions, beliefs and races."
A decade after Williams hung up his boots, the number of Pacific Islanders operating at the top level of the game had increased significantly. Bernie Fraser, John Schuster, Joe Stanley and Michael Jones became household names.
By the late 1980s there were a number of Pacific Island role models and former Samoan captain and current Auckland coach Pat Lam recalls the beneficial effect that had on guiding his career.
"It meant a lot ot my dad and uncles to see Bryan Williams become an All Black. Even now when Samoans do well it gives my family a sense of pride. Parents had an example of someone they could highlight.
"They could hold up guys like Bryan and Michael Jones as people from a similar background who had been successful and not got caught up in the drug culture.
"That was really important to have those role models and it helped too that my mates never saw me as Pat the Samoan, I was always Pat their mate who they played rugby with.
"There was never any distinction at St Peters where I went to school. Everyone was accepted and making the first XV really helped me through school. It also helped my parents who through me playing at St Peters and then for Auckland, they got to know the parents of some of the European players. Mixing with the European parents gave my mum and dad a different perspective of life and I suppose helped them integrate."
Social barriers and prejudices might have existed in New Zealand's wider society throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but not in rugby.
By the 1990s and certainly by the dawn of the professional age most teams had almost unconsciously built inclusive cultures that reflected and promoted the ethnic mix.
"The guys playing today are not tainted with anything that has gone in the past," says Nichol. "I think most coaches are aware that if they single out a quiet Polynesian and bawl at him in front of everyone it is going to shatter him. Whereas if the coach puts an arm round that player at training and has a quiet word he might get the outcome he is looking for.
"These are generalisations but I think there is an understanding that there are diverse backgrounds that need to be handled differently and because of that there is almost a celebration of the ethnic diversity."
As feelgood stories go, the happy marriage of cultures into the rugby fabric is hard to beat. The Pacific influence has brought pace, power, flair, excessive vowels and hard to place apostrophes.
By October this year a World Cup might just be added to that list.
