KEY POINTS:
"We are crying inside," said Semo Sititi as he settled into a chair to look backwards, at Samoa's strange defeat by Tonga in last weekend's inter-island conflict in Montpellier, and forwards, to Sunday's (NZ time) face-saving opportunity against England at Stade de la Beaujoire where, 21 years ago, France and New Zealand fought out the bloodiest n not to say most knee-clenchingly gruesome n match in living memory.
Wayne Shelford, the great titan of the All Black back row, had his scrotum split open that day.
The reigning champions will feel similarly emasculated if they lose to Sititi's men, for they will be as near as damn it out of the World Cup.
When the Samoans cry inside, the earth shakes.
In the team room at their hotel in the north-west suburbs of Paris, four words "pace", "power", "precision", "passion" were written neatly in the middle of a flip chart.
Surrounding those words were two more, in larger lettering, penned in a wild and sprawling hand: "Warrior spirit." At a Premiership club, such a message would seem criminally trite.
Seize the day, eye of the tiger, no backward step, every man a hero, blah-de-blah-de-blah.
Here, among the islanders, it sent a volt of electricity down the spine.
"It seems we have a choice," said the captain, still mortified that he should have lost a test match to his fellow Polynesians.
"We can leave this tournament as the worst Samoan side ever to play in a World Cup, or we can give ourselves a chance of leaving it as the best.
"It is down to us, individually as players and collectively as a team. If we can summon the strength of purpose to beat England, we can do honour to our jersey.
"And to us, the jersey means everything. We see it as greater than the man who wears it, as something that takes a man beyond himself. I think tomorrow will be an emotional occasion for all of us."
At 33, Sititi is counted among the special men of international rugby.
He has played professional rugby in New Zealand and Wales, Scotland and England - in Super 12, the Premiership and the Celtic League.
Nowadays, he earns his money in Japan, living with his wife and three children in Osaka and playing for the NTT Docomo Kansai club.
He may have a greater breadth of union experience than anyone currently involved in the game.
Yet when he talks rugby, he talks first and foremost of Samoa.
He was born in Moto'otua, a few minutes drive from the capital Apia, on the island known as Upolu.
He played school rugby at St Joseph's College before graduating to the St Joseph's Marist club side, from where he won selection for the Samoan seven-a-side team - he was, and remains, a superb exponent of the short game - and, ultimately, for the Test team, making his debut off the bench against Japan in 1999.
Later that year, he made the World Cup squad.
He was alone in still playing islands rugby, for free.
Everyone else was earning money, and a lot of it by Samoan standards, in New Zealand or Europe.
Sititi was not out of pocket for long, for in 2000 he won a Super 12 contract with the Wellington Hurricanes.
From there, Cardiff snapped him up, thus launching him on a six-year tour of duty in Britain.
He was not always a hit; much of his stay in northern parts was shrouded in anonymity.
But at the 2003 World Cup, he was anything but anonymous.
Having succeeded Pat Lam as captain of his country, he launched a spectacular Samoan uprising against England in Melbourne by scoring a try considered by many to be a masterpiece.
If he has forgotten the details now - "I think maybe it was 11 phases and 30 passes, although I may be wrong" - the feeling lives on.
"It was a moment to treasure, being in the right place at the right time to finish such a wonderful move," he said.
"And, you know, we might even have beaten them if the referee hadn't been so quick to award a penalty try against our scrum."
He knows England will set about the Samoan scrummage again tomorrow.
"They are always very strong in that department," he acknowledged, "but what concerns me more is that the English are used to the ways of international rugby.
"They play top-level Test matches year on year, against the best opposition in the world, and that experience gives them the ability to adjust to whatever circumstances might arise on the field.
"For us, it is more difficult. We don't have that depth of experience, and it showed against Tonga last weekend.
"We expected to win, but they were hungry and physical and delivered the best performance any of us had seen from them.
"I've been playing against Tongans for more than a decade and believe me, I've never seen them play like that. They took us by surprise and we didn't cope with it.
"Yet because of the way we lost in Montpellier, this match with England is perfect for us.
"Our promises, our beliefs, our dreams...all these are contained in this one game against the champions.
"We will be a different team to the one you saw last week, because the passion will be there. You will see it in our tackling.
"The game has changed now, and the way the rules are applied holds some Samoan players back from doing the thing they love to do, which is to hit hard and fairly in the tackle.
"We work hard on our discipline on and off the field, because we hate to be penalised. Still, we will be as physical as possible.
"In this match, of all matches, we must play like Samoans."
Japanese club rugby being what it is - "Not great, if you're talking about standards" - Sititi struggles to maintain the levels of form and fitness that allow him to play at international level.
"My life now is good from the family perspective," he said.
"We train for three hours a day, sometimes only three days a week.
"I spend more time with my children than I could ever have imagined during my time in Europe and at my age, I welcome the chance to rest.
"But there are always consequences, and the consequences of playing in Japan are that I have to put in a lot of extra work to keep in shape." Will he make it to a fourth World Cup? "I don't know," he replied.
"I would love to play in New Zealand in 2011, but 37 is a great age, especially for a back-row forward.
"I am not a prop. I have to run around."
Even so, Sititi lives for moments like these, and like Lam before him, he will continue to play until he is sure he cannot safely take another step.
On Sunday he will draw on the respect he commands from his charges to summon the furies - the warrior spirit highlighted on the flip chart in the team room.
He will talk about the people in the villages of Samoa, huddled to their radios in the small hours, listening to the commentary from a part of the world the overwhelming majority will never visit.
He will demand everything from them, and will receive it.
Like every Samoan, the captain expected to beat Tonga last weekend.
That expectation worked against his side by dousing the fires.
Sititi does not expect to beat England today, but he believes victory to be possible.
And that makes him and his kind supremely dangerous.
- INDEPENDENT
