2026-08-29 09:30:09

Lima Sopoaga “didn’t allow” himself to “fit in” at Wasps.

The 35-year-old fly-half moved from New Zealand to the UK in 2018 but his three-year stint with the club wasn’t a happy time, for which he shoulders some of the blame.

He told the Times newspaper: “I know I made mistakes. I went over there a little bit naive. If I had my time again I would have gone there with a different mindset. I would take my skills and sprinkle them into their system and not try and make their system work around me.

“I was like, ‘If you’re going to pay me all this cash, you might as well play the game I want to play.’ But I think that’s the wrong mindset. You sprinkle in your little bits of gold around the English game. I wish I could go back and change things. I didn’t allow myself to fit in.

“Some of my relationships with people at the club were a bit fractured. I have had my reflection on that, and how I could have dealt with my relationships better with coaches. And, you know, I think I’m a better person for it.”

Lima – who left for French side Lyon when his Wasps contract ended in 2021 – was so unhappy at the time, he even considered quitting rugby entirely.

He said: “It was an extremely difficult time. At one point I wanted to give up the game and not play rugby any more. I didn’t really enjoy it. I went there with a young family. My daughter was ten months old.

“To be honest, it’s f****** dark and gloomy there. I know it gets cold in New Zealand but [this was different]. It gets to your bones, bro.

“I knew it was bad when I rang my grandmother and she was like, ‘Are you sick?’ She had probably seen all the energy sucked out of my eyes. We went through Covid and all that s***. We were there by ourselves.

“Sometimes people forget those things. They are like, ‘He’s a professional, he earns his money.’ But we still have the problems that everyday people have. Just because you make heaps of money doesn’t mean you’re immune to these things. I also feel like the club let the players down.”

Players were forced to take a pay cut during the COVID-19 pandemic as clubs struggled to survive, and Wasps eventually went under in 2022, which Lima thinks was “pretty sad”.

He said: “The club was in a bad place before I got there. When your house isn’t in order from the top down, things don’t look great.

“Look at how the All Blacks have turned things around in such a short time. The house is in order from top down .

“We had gifted players at Wasps but the house wasn’t in order. It was pretty sad [that the club went bust]. That’s a historic club that should still be around. A lot of guys lost jobs — and not just players.”

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