Switch upsets Baber
“FRU is working hard in trying to get these players together from the young age and conducting programmes for them to come into the national teams at the age of 21. Moving overseas is just counter-intuitive to me. “For me personally, I badly want those players to stay in the team and represent Fiji for as long as they can and that’s what we are looking at doing similarly for the 15s.
“And the hard job is to develop these players and keeping them in the country for the next 3-5 years and helping them become better players.”
Baber highlighted the need to have experienced players to motivate the newcomers in the side to perform to the best of their ability and produce results.
“Paula Dranisinukula and Josua Vakurinabili are prime examples of that,” he said. I saw them playing in the Coral Coast 7s at the end of January last year and they didn’t play in tournaments until May and all that period I was trying to get them physically and mentally understanding of what rugby 7s was all about.
“And all the pressures that come with playing at national level and that is getting use to the scrutiny and comments from the public in terms of the performance of the players. “These are young men that come from the village and represent their country and doing their utmost best. After all we are human beings and we make mistakes but we try to make it right as many times as possible as we can.” The second cluster of the World Sevens Series will be held in Hamilton-Sydney next month