7s team’s performance
Hero Jerry and the house
JERRY TUWAI is indeed our best ever sevens player and even the great Waisale Serevi has openly acknowledged this, suggesting that he is lucky that Jerry wasn’t playing in his era.
Had it happened, we would have been stuck in a Messi/CR7 type of GOAT situation, albeit in the same camp. Even in the current World Sevens Series and especially in the most recent Vancouver leg, Jerry outperformed everyone else in his team. The argument on why the team is not doing well presently is being blown out of proportion.
It’s simple. It’s bad coaching on display where our very talented players do not seem to have different game plans for different oppositions and styles.
A legend of a player in Ben Gollings may just have found and also slipped on the proverbial banana skin that could take away some of his former shine. But that’s for another day.
Suggestions that hero Jerry has not received his $33,300 for his house yet, and somehow associating that and other players’ pay with the team’s performance is simply an insult to the fans’ intelligence.
In the history of our game, money or player remuneration has never been the cause of bad performances.
Bad coaching was always the main reason while bad team selections (due to veikilai) were to blame sometimes.
With Ben Ryan and Gareth Baber, selection became a non-issue as the duo could field a bunch of newbies and grab a cup or three every season. That was top coaching on display.
Gollings is simply not cutting it with his flat styles and lame comments after each tournament.
This is not a political article, but it is a fact that Jerry has already received his land title, for a piece of land that many of us can only dream of buying.
I thought the understanding with the government in 2021 was that Jerry would receive his $33,300 when he begins construction.
I may have gotten it wrong due to English being my second language (ESL) but I would strongly suggest that the matter not be made the centre of recent bad on-field performances. This is a way of using emotional blackmail to cover up for bad performances.
I read that Ben Ryan was being reconsidered for a role in Fiji rugby and that news alone should send fans into cloud nine compared to the delirium we are in now. Building a house is not a simple process.
Plans need to be drawn up and lodged with the authorities, quotations obtained, finance secured, inexpensive and honest contractor engaged and then Government may release the $33,300 for the house, as is the case with the grants given to first-home buyers or builders.
If all these processes have not been completed, it borders on fraud to be using the house money issue to deflect blame away from the sevens team’s performance.
Jerry Tuwai was throwing everything he had at the Argentinians and they were roughing Jerry up with bad tackles, high at times.
That time Jerry was not thinking like, “bloody hell, they didn’t pay my $33k so to hell with this game”.
No, Jerry is Jerry, and Jerry will be Jerry, new house or no new house, he is the ultimate sevens superhero, and dare anyone splash him on the pages for the wrong reasons. When that man runs onto the field he oozes calm and confidence, and I no longer care how he plays. His presence alone on the field should lift the players and the coach as well to new levels.
If that’s not happening, then all those people need help, maybe removal, not Jerry. Enough.
DONALD SINGH
Suva