Fijian 7s to re-energize for Cape Town

Fiji Airways Fijian 7s team are determined to bounce back in South Africa after their slow start to the HSBC World Sevens Series in Dubai last week.

Despite missing the quarter finals for the first time in Dubai, the Cape Town 7s defending champions believe they have reviewed their performance honestly and are ready to charge at the second tournament.

Head Coach Gareth Baber said “We are in similar situation to last season where we didn’t react well in the first tournament.”

“We were disappointing in a couple of key areas namely our defence and retention of re-starts.

“I have gone through the data and had a look at all our games.

“We only scored 17 tries in the four games and we just have to be more ruthless with our scoring and tighter in terms of our defence” he said.

Good news for fans and team management as the majority of players remain injury free.

Baber said the only concern was captain Paula Dranisinukula who injured his hand and missed the play-off match against Canada at Dubai 7s.

Baber added “We thought he had a potential fracture coming into the Canada game, at that stage of the tournament, with his welfare we didn’t wanted to risk him.”

“His has come around this week and trained with full contact and he looks fine” he said.

Baber said the team’s focus is to treat every game as a final after being grouped with Dubai champions South Africa, USA and Japan.

“We didn’t win four finals last weekend, we only won three so we will be looking to winning six this weekend and we know to achieve that we need to play at our very best.”

After working hard to eradicate discipline issues last season, Fiji’s six yellow cards in Dubai were a disappointing impact on the tournament results.

Baber said “It wasn’t good enough last weekend and the players have been told about it.”

“We only conceded tries at when we were down to six players and the guys on field were forced to work harder, so it’s the responsibility of the players to take calculated risks on the field and avoid those yellow card offences.” he said.

The Fiji Airways Fijian 7s open their campaign against USA at 6.35am on Saturday then face South Africa at 12.51am on Sunday before meeting Japan in their final pool match at 6.35am.

The Cup quarterfinal is scheduled for 10.18pm on Sunday, semifinals start at 1.39am on Monday and the final is scheduled for 5.56am.