Nadroga Women’s Rugby Aim to Gain Experience

The Nadroga Rugby Women’s Skipper Cup team is hoping that their participation in this first year of the Skipper FRU Premiership Cup Women’s Competition, will generate a lot of interest with the local girls in their area who will in turn sign up for rugby.

According to Nadroga Rugby Union President, Jikoibau Matawalu, their main aim coming into the competition was to first participate, experience the game of rugby and enjoy it at the same time.

“It’s a totally new experience for our women and they are enjoying every bit of it, especially with the training and the learning of new skills.”

Jikoibau added that they do not have a Women’s competition in Nadroga, due to the lack of female players, but a huge percentage of the players in the team are from around the area.

“90% of the players in the team are from Nadroga.  There were no trials to select the team, but just an invitation sent out, whereby we were able to recruit 30 girls for this season.”

“We have not held any women’s competition yet since we are yet to generate interests that will allow us to run a competition.  80% of the players are playing for the first time this year and 20% have played some rugby league before and little bit of school rugby.”

“We have designed a training program that first introduces them to the sport and the skills involved, so basically we are trying to take them slowly for this first year and run more skills training to develop basic rugby skills.”

Jikoibau says that to have a women’s competition inclusive in the Skipper FRU Premiership Cup is a great initiative by the FRU.

“It is great to have this Competition which is long overdue for Fiji.  It is a great start and we can see prospects of access in this first year. We look forward to a more competitive season next year.”

The Nadroga Rugby Women’s team will play against Naitasiri in Round 4 of the Skipper FRU Premiership Cup, at 11.30am at Ratu Cakobau Park in Nausori this Saturday.