Coach works on mental toughness in pressure situation

Fiji Airways Fijian men’s sevens rugby head coach Ben Gollings says they are working on a few areas, which needs improvement ahead of the Dubai and Cape Town Sevens tournaments. He said the players have been trained about game management and how to perform under pressure like the Cup final of the Hong Kong Sevens against Australia.

The Fijians had the upper hand right to the final few seconds where wrong decision allowed the Aussies to register a 20-17 win.

Gollings said the Cup final really tested the players mentally and he is confident that would perform in this area as it contributes a lot of to winning a match against tough opposition.

“There’s been no real breaks so we’re just trying to keep the consistency within our game. Post Hong Kong, the real big issue was obviously the game management during important periods of the game and kind of game awareness. “We’ve discussed a lot of that and then we’ve been building through it in in our training and we’ll continue to develop that as it’s both an individual and a collective team awareness.”

The Fijian sevens team wants to set a platform and take charge on the HSBC World Sevens Series points table after the end of the Dubai and Cape Town tournaments.

Fiji currently sits second on the table with 19 points, three behind leaders Australia. “We can just keep building off the experiences it is really important as we want to try and finish top of the series coming out of these next few tournaments,” Gollings said.

The Fijian 7s team is pooled with Argentina, New Zealand and Uruguay.

“It is a tough pool. Three very physical games against three very similar teams. But I think it’s great for us to have that challenge.

I think that adds to the focus that we need and you know, in Hong Kong, we manage the pool very well, which was a pool that wasn’t very strong.

So I’m hoping that this really drives the players and we really set ourselves targets and achieve it.”