Vodafone Fiji 7s Cape Town Diary by Naca Cawanibuka

Bula Everyone,

The team has settled well in Cape Town.

Upon our arrival we went straight into a team meeting where we reviewed our high performance in Dubai and also an overview of the training here in Cape Town.

We have had a few days to prepare whereby we had our gym sessions in the morning and rugby session in the afternoons out on the field. It gave us an opportunity to go through some of the areas we need to improve on this weekend in terms of our defense and also just switching from attack into defense and being wary of how teams will want to pounce on us when we are on the back foot.

There was also a session on the clarity of roles and understanding on how we want to defend and just our general motion in the field whether its attack or defense.

Wednesday was our execution day for the weekend where identified areas we would like to get the most work done in terms of intensity and just getting clarity on what we want to do for this weekend’s tournament.

We had a scrimmage session against Uganda and it gave us a good opportunity to run our plays and to also look at a few combinations. It will also assist us in making those adjustments in our line up and selection for our final 12 for the weekend.

All the players have made progress in terms of recovery and getting those energy levels back.

In terms of injury there are slight niggles and knocks from the weekend nothing too serious to rule anyone out at this point. Just Sevuloni Mocenacagi who is recovering well from a swollen toe infection he picked up in Doha. He was quite tough and soldiered on in the weekend in all those games in Dubai. However he has been able to get back into training with the boys.

Everything is fine in camp, the team is quite switched on and just by talking to them and having the feel around the team environment I can sense there is a real sense of urgency now and a hunger. We quietly feel disappointed deep inside, as we didn’t complete the job last week in Dubai in that final against South Africa so we are hungry just to go out there and really prepare well in our training sessions. God willing our preparations will set us up for what is going to be an exciting and challenging weekend.

Cape Town is abuzz at the moment, obviously South Africa is on a high after winning the Dubai 7s so hopefully it works to our advantage as all teams shift their focus to South Africa.

For us it is just our processes that we will have to get right and preparing as best as we can individually and collectively as a team and focusing on our pool play opponents, and the first team will be Japan and then Kenya and then obviously the last team in our group which is France.

So we will look at these individual teams we will look at ourselves first and how we want to prepare and make sure that we put our best foot forward and be the best version of ourselves as we try and attack this last tournament and finish 2016 on a high note.

The goal obviously is to finish off the year being on top of the series standings. We will work hard on working on what we can control. We will leave the other results out there but for us really the results we can control is what we will work hard on.

Also at this point I would like to say on behalf of the team that it is with great sadness and grief that we received the sad news of the passing of one of the former National 7s Coaches Eddie Waqa. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and our deep condolences to his wife and children. Indeed Eddie will be missed by the rugby family and he has been an influential figure and a massive contributor towards the game of rugby in Fiji. He has helped mold players from the grass roots and coached at different levels and also being an influential educator in the training and education platform for World Rugby. Eddie is a well-respected figure so we are really sad to hear the news of his passing and I am sure Eddie will be long remembered by the rugby fraternity in Fiji and the rugby world at large. He was a renowned figure in the world of 7s and for us as a team we do value and acknowledge and appreciate all the contributions that Eddie has done for our national game and our prayers and thoughts goes out to his family at their time of sorrow.

We would also like to acknowledge the support and prayers of our families, friends and fans back home and from around the world as we look forward to this weekend. Your constant support is what drives the team to be the best on the field. We look forward to a good outing this weekend and to also make Fiji proud.

Moce Mada

Naca Cawanibuka