Academy Programme provides holistic support for young players

In 2015 while the Flying Fijians were busy preparing for the Rugby World Cup, three emerging players were also busy in the newly introduced Fiji Rugby Union High Performance Academy Programme.

4 years later these 3 players Dolokoto, Lomani and Vugakoto are part of the Flying Fijians Rugby World Cup squad, and while they’re preparing for their first ever RWC game, various other young players are now going through the same channel in the FRU Academy program.

The programme has developed players from an early stage and mold them into the professional environment of rugby. It exposes young players into the high performance system and explore the gist of their potential.

FRU high performance general manager Bill Gadolo explain that some players from the program are now playing for the Drua while some have been contracted overseas.

“Currently this year we got a big turnout of players making their way into the Academy program at a very young age and that’s a massive achievement.”

Before this system was introduced the culture of selection was picking the players into the National team where they’ll come in for camp or training.

The Academy program provide an opportunity for these young boys to train daily together and each day expectations of the National teams are being emphasize on a daily basis in terms of training protocols they’ll go through.

Gadolo added that there’s a lot of education in terms of our holistic support and players preparations off field.

“it sets the platform of our young players coming up the ranks. If they prepare well and are ready than they’ll make it to the national team.”

“We have the school boys, so from these school boys program we’ll be picking a number of players to be part of the pathway program and who knows some of them might be in our next World Cup squad.”

The program not only benefits our national teams as individuals players set them in a good platforms and good profiles to be able to get good contracts, and to be able to support themselves and their family financially.