Back Top of Dune
YOU SEE OTHER PEOPLE GOING THROUGH THE SAME PROCESS AND YOU NEED TO PROVE THAT YOU HAVE THE ABILITY TO BE SELECTED TO PLAY: COACH GARETH BABER
The Fiji Airways Fijian 7s team and officials happy after their training session at the Sigatoka sand dunes on February 16, 2019. The team is preparing for the USA-leg of the World Sevens Series in Las Vegas. The tournament starts from March 1 to 3, with USA as defending champions.
Gareth Baber knows his players need to be at their best form if they are to win the Las VegasVancouver leg of the World Sevens Series next month
And the Fiji Airways Fijian 7s head coach is doing it the tough way throughout the week culminating with the hard grind at the Sigatoka sand dunes yesterday morning.
“At the sand dunes you certainly ask questions about yourselves,” Baber said. “You see other people going through the same process and you need to prove that you have the ability to be selected to play in the next two tournaments.
“They have worked hard all week. It’s always a good asset for players who haven’t been in our environment to suddenly understand the way we trained and what’s expected of them. But they have all worked hard from when we started on Tuesday right through to Saturday morning at the dunes.
“I think that they get the levels of understanding that they need to be at and they showed courage to date with the others to stay and work hard and keep pushing and I have been pleased with
their work efforts.”
Out of the last four tournaments, Fiji have won two in Cape Town and Hamilton and now third on 72 points behind joint leaders New Zealand and USA (76).
“It is huge, every tournament and there is good competition from New Zealand, USA, South Africa, England,”Baber said.
“We all know that if you’re off your game by a percent or two, any team can catch anybody and that’s where we need to put ourselves on top of our game.
“We keep talking about being able to put back to back tournaments together and have that consistency.”
Fiji are top seed in Pool D alongside Australia, Wales and Scotland at the Las Vegas 7s which kicks off on March 1-3 and Vancouver 7s the following weekend. Meanwhile, Baber confirmed Seremaia Tuwai and is recovering from a hamstring injury and skipper Kalioni Nasoko had a slight sprain on his ankle during training on Thursday .
“We trained against each other on some games on Thursday. We’ve got to do contact against each other. Playing and training against other teams is always going to be difficult,” Baber said.
“You guard against what you can but you again have to pick up a couple of things. There is nothing major to worry about for Nasoko and Tuwai but I think the sand dunes was not the best place for them to be so we have put them in the gym in Lawaqa.”
They return to camp tomorrow to resume training at Lawaqa Park, Sigatoka.