Penaia Cakobau

Fijian flanker Penaia Cakobau represents the Fijian Drua, the Pacific franchise that joined Super Rugby Pacific to give Fiji's domestic talent a sustained professional pathway. Born in December 1993, Cakobau brings senior experience to a squad designed to showcase the Fijian way of forward play: explosive, offload-heavy, and dangerous at and around the breakdown. Flankers in the Drua system are asked to do the conventional work of the position — disrupting opposition ball, supporting carries, defending in wider channels — while also contributing to the broken-field, ball-in-hand identity that has come to define the franchise. Cakobau's role sits within that blend of grafting forward duties and the running threat the Drua try to generate in transition. For experienced Fijian forwards, the Drua serve as a critical platform: regular Super Rugby Pacific exposure provides both a competitive home season and a window into international consideration, with weekly outings against Australian and New Zealand sides representing the kind of sustained test environment historically hard to access from purely domestic Fijian rugby.