Confident, a key factor for Nadi

After losing out in the Skipper Cup semi-finals last year, Nadi Rugby knew they had to re-strategized their game, they aimed to come into this season stronger and finish the season on a high note.

This wasn’t the case as Nadi fell short to qualify for the Skipper Cup semi-finals after finishing off the season in fifth place.

After 14 rounds of Skipper Cup, Nadi was behind Namosi with 3 points, Nadi secured 7 wins, 1 draw, and 6 loss accumulating a total of 36 points.

However, Nadi managed to strip the Farebrother Sullivan Trophy from Namosi in their round 13 match at ANZ Stadium, Suva.

After getting their hands on the prestigious trophy from Namosi, it was Nadi’s final chance to fulfil their aim coming into this season, they knew they had to shift their focus to keep the trophy until the next season, and they did!

After beating Namosi the last hurdle for Nadi to overcome was to defend the trophy against a highly praised Tailevu team. Leading up to the match, Tailevu was the favorable team and Nadi were the underdogs. Nadi knew Tailevu was going to come in hard to take the trophy.

Nadi kept their composure and honed up their game leading up to their final and crucial match, in which they worked it out perfectly and upset the favorable Tailevu team to keep the trophy until next season.

Their last defense of the trophy was a successful one in which they also achieved their aim of being the best rugby team in the country.

Nadi rugby manager Samuela Navale said that being Farebrother Champions means a lot to the Vanua of Nadi, and it has put Nadi up in the pinnacle of our local rugby competition.

“Winning this trophy makes Nadi rugby great again, we lose out in the semifinals spot but we’re glad that we manage to win the Farebrother Sullivan Trophy this year and that’s something we’ll forever be proud of,” Navale said.

“It been a long 10 years since we won the Farebrother Trophy last year, then it was taken again from us by Nadroga, but this year when we went to challenge the Trophy from Namosi, we were all confident that we’re going to bring it back to Nadi,” added Navale.

“We learned from our mistake last year after losing the Farebrother to Nadroga, this year we knew we had to defend the Trophy, we were confident that we’ll defend the trophy and our positive mindset took us through to defend the trophy against Tailevu,” he said.