7s Scrutiny
Lack of planning, no clarity & poor conditioning of players contribute to our poor performance, claims Police coach
The strength and conditioning of our Fiji Airways Fijian men’s rugby sevens’ players is now being scrutinised.
This was after the Ben Gollingscoached side finished a disappointed seventh place at the Hamilton tournament in New Zealand on Sunday, which resulted in them dropping to eighth spot on the HSBC World Sevens Series points table.
The Fijians suffered a 19-10 loss to eventual winners Argentina in the Cup quarterfinal and were again beaten 26-19 by Australia in the 5th spot semifinal. In earlier tournaments, Fiji finished ninth in Dubai and managed to secure fifth spot in Cape Town, South Africa.
The top four men’s teams at the end of the series, automatically qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games in France.
Speaking to SUNsports yesterday, the Police 7s teams’ coaching coordinator Sale Tubuna blamed poor planning on the team’s preparation as the reason of their poor performance. The Police 7s teams are one of the consistent performers in the Super Sevens series.
Police players in the national sevens squad that played in Hamilton included; captain Waisea Nacuqu, Filipo Sauturaga, Josevani Soro and Josese Batirerega. The national sevens team’s strength and conditioning coach is Etu Tusitala who took over from Naca Cawanibuka. “I don’t know how he (Gollings) is measuring the players’ progress during their training sessions,” Tubuna who is a qualified Australia’s NRL (National Rugby League) Level 2 accredited coach said.
“With the fitness test done and the results should be Gollings guide for a good or a bad tournament. Its small areas like ruck defence, ruck attack, tackling, kick off, scrum and lineout that they need to work hard on. It will add up to make them a winning team.
“All teams can be physically fit and strong but without mental toughness they are weak.”
The former Fijian Bati assistant
coach said apart from good preparation, the coach and players must know where they are heading to or what they should focused on.
“Does the coach know where they are heading to or what he expects from the players.
“Their losses have raised a lot of questions, create confusion and brought about more curiosity about their performance. I believe poor preparation is the main reason of the team’s downfall .
Take ownership
Tubuna called on Gollings to take ownership of the team and not to rely on former national reps. “I believe those people around the coach are feeding him with some wrong information. The head coach should be firm on the decision he makes and should not rely on those around him. This is because he will be held accountable and not the people who are currently behind him.”
He said clarity is a must especially for players to know where they are heading to or the coach identifying areas that they need to work on. “Gollings is the captain of the ship, the one that makes the final decision and then delegates his (coaching) staff to do the job. He should know of the direction they are heading to and what they need to do.
“As coach, he knows the standard of play at the World Seven Series and what needs to be done. They should learn to be proactive, have a positive attitude. They should try to lead in controlling the momentum and tempo of the game.
“Fijian players are easily distracted so to fine-tune them is quite tough but I always remind them about their mindset and play from their heart if they want to win. The challenge for the team is to lift their performance in Sydney.”
No depth
Tubuna also highlighted the need to build on depth in the sevens training squad.
“The depth is not there at the moment as there is no pool of players to select from. This is an areas Gollings and his coaching staff must hard work on.
“At the moment, they have very limited players to select from and that has taken its toll on some of the senior players.
“For Police, we have three teams (Police Blue, Police White and Know Your Neighbour).
“Our new players compete for a spot in the Know Your Neighbour side, while those who have proven themselves go on to play for Police While and Police Blue.
“With a similar set-up for the national sevens team, they should have more players to select from. “They should have a solid selection base where players compete for a position in the main team.
“There should be competition within the squad because it will make the team stronger. If not then players will just walk into camp, train but not fully fit before flying out for tournaments.