Levani Botia: 'You have to be a man when you walk inside prison'

These past few months have been quite the purgatory for Levani Botia. Renowned for his durability, his name has been a constant presence on the Le Rochelle team sheet for a decade, so much so that he was widely feted when making his 200th appearance for the French club last April.

He was allowed to run out to the packed Stade Marcel-Deflandre on his own, taking the acclaim from the sold-out 16,700 attendance before a Top 14 win over Toulon. Thirteen days later, though, his run of selection was brutally ended.

His forearm got busted at Bordeaux and 22 weeks on, he is still waiting to add to an appearance tally stuck at 201. Frustrating? You bet and an exact return day isn’t yet set in stone even though the 35-year-old would like, if possible, to be selected by Fiji for an Autumn Nations Series that includes games in Scotland, Wales, Spain and Ireland.

He hasn’t retired from Test rugby, that’s for certain. “I’m still available if the Fiji team needs me, I haven’t decided to retire yet,” he enthused to RugbyPass over the phone from France following another day’s rehab. “I’m still working hard to be fit and be available if Fiji needs me.”

Being injured has been such a drag for the veteran. “I’m back probably in a few weeks. It’s one of the longest ones; I haven’t had a recovery, a long rest like this before. I'm missing rugby. Sometimes it is boring because you can’t do too much during this situation. There have been a couple of trainings but not allowed to do contact. It makes me miss rugby.”

Botia’s extended absence can’t smudge his legendary status on the Atlantic coast. He gambled when he first arrived in 2014, quitting his prison guard job in Fiji, temporarily leaving his family behind and betting his future that a three-month spell at the then second-tier club would pave the way to a lengthy career in pro rugby.

He hit the jackpot. La Rochelle were promoted, Botia was rewarded with contract security and the rest, as they say, is history which culminated in that wonderful sight six months ago of him of him jogging out solo onto the pitch to take the salute from the adoring fans.

“It was an amazing moment, the memory of a lifetime. I never imagined to be reaching the 200th game with La Rochelle. It has been a great journey for me and the club as well. The best memories? I came for just three months and winning the final to reach the Top 14 is one of my best memories. It extended my contract as well. Also winning two European championships.”

What were those first few weeks like in March a decade ago, the then 24-year-old arriving into a country that was alien to him with so much on the line? “We went to Colomiers the first week and then my first game was Narbonne at home. I’m still confused at that moment because I hadn’t decided to live in France, to stay for so long in France.

“Honestly, it was really difficult. I was lucky when I came to France that legends of Fijian rugby played here at La Rochelle. Sireli Bobo, Kini Murimurivalu and a few others. It was hard for me because of the changed environment, the people and the language, and the food especially.

“It was a lot of change and I lost weight when I came. No one knows because I just hit the easy food but I was lucky that I was called by Kini’s family to live with them. They helped me but it was tough when I came, difficult because a lot of things I hadn’t tried in my life.”

The sacrifice was with it. “The decade has been amazing. Since my family arrived here they have been in love with this small town. It’s quiet and people are so friendly and we are welcomed everywhere we go. It’s familiar because it is the same at home in Fiji. People are so friendly and so kind here.” And the food? “What can I say is the best? Yeah, oysters and baguette!”

La Rochelle are the French equivalent of Exeter, second division regulars who gradually fought to the top and conquered Europe. While Ronan O’Gara’s charges have yet to win the Top 14 title unlike the twice-crowned Chiefs in England, they are persistently knocking on the door to add the Bouclier de Brennus to the back-to-back Champions Cup annexed in 2022 and 2023.

“No one believed this club could be like the biggest club, one of the biggest in Europe, giving a good example of the game every weekend, especially in the European championship,” chuckled Botia. “We haven’t won the Top 14 trophy yet but at this moment we can see a lot of progress.

"A lot of players are selected for the French team and some of the biggest players come here not like before. We have Jack Nowell here, an amazing guy, some of the All Blacks guys. It’s something big for this club that there are big players in the team every week.

“It's a lot of progress since I first came. We didn’t have much good facilities and it was small, but it started to grow in the Top 14. The club got more sponsors and changed the coach. Normally it’s a French coach but they had to bring in English-speaking coaches like Jono Gibbes and then Ronan O’Gara.

“A lot of things have changed. Facilities. The mindset of the players. One of the best experiences is having an English-speaking coach in France. It changed our mental discipline to be a champion. It was hard to change because there was a mix of foreigners and French but they put it together year by year until we won a trophy.

“Guys like Ronan are so smart and intelligent. He knows management and game management and how to use the players and how to train. We just train how we play and he has managed me. ‘Are you okay to play? Are you good to go this week, or are you next week? I need you to do a booster week next week. How are your injuries?’ It’s always something like that.

“He checks all the time. He is amazing, keeps talking to the boys, makes everyone happy. As long as the players are happy he knows that everything is going to be okay and it's something special. He has built a connection between the players and the coach and we are very close.”

Botia’s brutality in helping La Rochelle thrive has been exceptional. He is a feared operator regardless of whether he is chosen in the back row or midfield. He hits hard and is a constant balls-stealing threat. “It doesn’t matter what position I can get; as long as I am on the field I love to play. But at this moment I really love to play in the forwards because of the age.”

How did he perfect the admirable art of poaching? “I don’t plan to do that every game. It’s whatever I see in the field I just do. I never train it, I never plan for that. It’s something that is mixed up in my mind when I play. I have to challenge myself to do a lot of things. It’s just part of the game that I play.

“I didn’t do that enough before but it’s a force right now… I have been smashed a couple of times in the ruck where I steal the ball, especially the people like Toulouse or Leinster and when we went to Cape Town, to Stormers last year, there was tough competition with those boys.

“It’s tough every week with the recycle in the ruck. I can see the big boys are ready to take me out,” he added with a laugh. “After the game, you will have a sore body because of the big boys cleaning up the ruck, but that is nothing new. I just need to recover as quick as I can during the week.”

Just don’t call Botia ‘Demolition Man’. Nicknames modestly aren’t his thing. “I have heard so many things about me, people changing how they call me. I don’t know where it comes from, I don’t understand it when people call me that. That is what people say and it’s not me.” So how would you describe yourself? “I don’t know. Just a professional Fijian guy.”

Botia has been wired that way ever since he was young and walking the 14kms from Suva from Nakasi to training as he didn’t have the full return bus fare. It lit a fire in him that still burns. “That was before I got work as a prison officer. I lived with my family, my uncle, my mum’s eldest brother. After lunch it would take me two hours to get to the field where we were training.

“As soon as I left school, I always remember people saying that I will be a good player. I played good rugby every time when I was a kid, so I just followed that dream and looked at other Fijian players, their style, watched them on the TV. Seeing them play, it gave me a lot of confidence to train hard so I can achieve my dream.”

Botia was 21 when he joined the prison service, his jailhouse shifts providing the funding to assist his rugby ambition. “It’s not nice when you work in the prison,” he recalled. “You are dealing with people who are violent, dealing with people who have nothing to lose.

"So as we worked every day, we had to be alert, no sleep, even if you have a night shift. It was really tough inside because we were dealing with some people who didn’t listen to us and sometimes threatened officers, things like that. You have to be a man when you walk inside, see them face to face.”

He eventually quit to give full-time rugby a shot. “I had to leave my job. I had to write my resignation letter and my wife [Emele] had to stay back with the kids when I went to France. I wasn’t sure if I was coming for good money or getting a contract, I just came here for three months and then would then go back and find another work in Fiji if that didn’t work out. I explained to my wife and she agreed, so I came and I didn’t want to go back with an empty hand.”

Contracted through to the summer of 2026, by which stage he will be 37, Botia isn’t sure what his next career will be. “Right now it’s about trying to look after my kids, to finish their college and do whatever they want and then going back home. Coaching is something that is on my mind as well, I need to make a decision soon.

“People ask me when I will stop. For me, it depends on my body, depends on what my body says. If it says stop, I’ll stop. I haven’t decided when I will stop. I just have to look forward to every year when I am still contracted here. I have two more years.”

 

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