Uphill battle for Fiji Airways 7s as they’re looking to play 6 finals at Hong Kong.

With three weeks until the coveted HSBC World Rugby Hong Kong Sevens Series, the Fiji Airways Fijian 7s have an enormous task to prepare for their toughest job yet sitting in Pool C with Australia, New Zealand and Kenya.

The team returned from Canada on Wednesday nursing a number of injury concerns but more  importantly a fervent desire to turn around the results from the previous leg and return to peak at their
second home in Hong Kong.

“At the moment there are some injury among some of the players which
may be an issue going in to Hong Kong, but we have had our debrief, we’re hurting from these last tournaments, we want to use that hurt to fuel this next stage of preparation and we know what do in this remaining weeks until Hong Kong 7s kicks off” he said.

Captain Kalione Nasoko was sidelined after day one in Canada and the power forward who has been a dominant force for Fiji this series is under a serious cloud for the next leg.

“Kali had a reoccurrence of an injury he had on his knee, which he’s been nursing since before Dubai.

We’ll look at that this week but it’ll be a hard push to get him to Hong Kong.
Obviously we’ll work to get him there.”

Baber added that Nacuqu will miss out the rest of the series which is a big blow and break out star Filimoni Botitu who has taken up the playmaker role has been outstanding and should be ready for Hong
Kong.

“Botitu took a couple of smacks in the back and was having a lot of neck pain so we managed him through the second tournament, its incredible to think he came into that position when we lost Waisea, and stepped up to be really strong for us.”

He added that having these injuries in the team is very tough to take especially on some very influential players and leading up to Hong Kong with a tough pool ahead of them.

“It’s a tough pool with effectively three quarter finals for us. The boys know what they have to execute, they know that we’ll have to play 6 finals to win the tournament which will be tough but that’s the nature of the competition we’re involved in.”

Baber emphasized that the rest of the players are fine and will be ready for the Hong Kong 7s which will
kick off on the 5th of April.