Tokyo 2020 countdown starts ....
7s men’s head coach tells on the pressure, privilege of coaching Fiji.
From this week, the Team Fiji men’s rugby sevens team will move to the Games Village in Tokyo. Team Fiji media officer, Ritesh Ratiram said yesterday, the rule is that teams can enter the Games Village, five days before they start their competition.
The Tokyo Olympic Games opens on July 23 and the men’s rugby sevens competition gets underway on July 26. The Fijians are the defending gold medal champions.
Team Fiji men’s rugby sevens captain Jerry Tuwai and women’s rugby sevens captain Rusila Nagasau are Fiji’s flagbearers during the opening ceremony.
Coaching the Fiji Airways Fijian 7s team and living in Fiji for the past five years has been like home for Gareth Baber.
From Llanelli, South Wales a small town to Fiji, there was not much difference in the way of life.
Baber told BBC Sports, that the family oriented and faith culture in Fiji is similar to his childhood upbringing.
“I spent a lot of time in Llanelli as a kid, in the pubs, playing pool, knocking about in the lanes outside”he told BBC Sport.
“Since then I have toured the world with rugby, and being Fijian is as close to being Welsh as I have seen anywhere.
“It’s the closeness of faith, family, community and the game. And the rituals that surround it all.
“Here in Fiji, there is the kava ceremony (the ritual drinking of a crushed root tea), every day in some villages.
“That completes the same trinity of church, rugby and pub that I grew up on.
“We would go to pub on a Saturday, around 11am, and then everyone in the community would watch Llanelli play at Stradey Park.
After we would go back to my gran’s for dinner with more family. And then on Sunday we would go to church.
“That model is something I recognise here in Fiji. It makes me comfortable because it is something I have very fond memories of.”
Unique style
Baber indicated how important 7s rugby in Fiji is and its unique style of playing the sport. It is more than just a game, it meant so much more.
“Sevens in Fiji is played as differently by one team as any international sport I have seen,” Baber explained.
“You can hark back to Brazilian football teams of the 1970s or the great Australian cricket teams of the 1990s. Fijian rugby is as different and special as that.
“I think Fiji’s style comes from socio-economic reasons, for geographical reasons,” explains Baber.
“There are fewer things that young men and women in Fiji have access to at the end of each day of schooling. It might be volleyball. That is huge in Fiji and some of those skills transfer into the rugby.
“But also if there is a patch of grass, every evening all the youths and seniors would play “village touch”.
“It could be 40-a-side, with makeshift posts made out of bamboo - I am not saying that in a romantic sense, that is exactly what you see.
“The game is the same all over the islands - high risk, high tempo, offloading, no real consequences for the ball going to ground.
“It’s very different from Britain. When it is soft underfoot you don’t mind going to ground. If it is wet and cold you go into contact rather than make that pass.
“Here in Fiji, if you go on the floor you might end up with a piece of stone or glass in your leg. So, you play the game at a height, four or five foot rather than one foot.
“You develop your skills differently in that environment, learning and creating in an unstructured way, compared to being on a grass pitch with coaches either end telling you what to do.
“Then you add into that the athletic development. Kids farm alongside their parents, walk good distances to get to school, do chores at home in the evening before going out to play rugby.
“There are eight or nine-year-olds here in Fiji with the physique of a 17 or 18-year-old in a rugby academy in Britain.
“And, the way Fiji is, economically, culturally, I can’t see it changing for the next 30 or 40 years.”
Christianity is central to the nation’s public and personal life. For Baber, whose own Anglican faith began in south Wales, the players’ devotion poses challenges.
“The faith is so strong here,”he added. “
“There is a fatalistic approach. You have faith that God will provide, and what will be will be decided by the Lord.
“It means you can rationalise a performance and move on, but, initially you think, how do I bring accountability to that?
“You have to go through a process of explaining there has to be discipline and sacrifice to be able to do God’s work in front of the world.”
Sacrifices
Baber indicated of the sacrifices the team had to make during their journey for Tokyo, given the restrictions of sports tournament in Fiji due to the escalating cases of COVID-19.
The team who camped together amidst the pandemic has a huge task ahead to defend the Olympic gold medal.
“I would be lying if I said I hadn’t envisaged us winning it,” said Baber.
“I have to envisage us being in a situation where the players have played their best game ever in the final and taken the chance that God has given them.
“But I also have to plan around us losing it as well. Either of those scenarios involves us coming back here and quarantining in individual rooms in a hotel for two weeks.
“We have to do it for the greater good of the country.”
Olympic Games Fixtures Men’s Rugby 7s (Fiji time)
Monday July 26, 12pm: Fiji vs Japan, 8pm: Fiji vs Canada, at Tokyo Stadium
Tuesday July 27, 12:30pm Fiji vs Great Britain
Women’s Rugby 7s
Thursday July 29, 12pm: Fiji vs France, 7:30pm Fiji vs Canada
Friday July 30, 12pm: Fiji vs Brazil. Edited by Leone Cabenatabua
Feedback: sereana.salalo@fijisun.com.fj