WORLD RUGBY REPS HERE

World Rugby representatives concluded their two-day visit to Fiji where they inspected venues, hotels and other facilities under consideration by the Fiji Rugby Union as part of its bid for the World Sevens Series.

Head of Competitions and Performance, Mark Egan was joined by General Manager of High Performance, Peter Horne for the inspection visit which was supervised by FRU chief executive officer John O’Connor and the bid task team executives Brian Thorburn and Greg Peters. O’Connor said “Our taskforce has completed considerable work in preparing for our bid submission and the visit by World Rugby was timely in receiving feedback in a range of areas.

“We inspected venues, hotels, observed prospective training sites and engaged with our team in relation to many matters. We thanked them for taking the time to visit and assist us with our preparations.”

Egan said “The visit offered us an opportunity to review progress made by the FRU in preparing their World Sevens Series bid and also to answer any questions that the bid team had regarding the tender process, the tournament delivery requirements, commercial and financial matters.

“A very experienced and capable bid team is in place and it is obvious that they have a solid understanding of our requirements and they are making good progress in preparing the FRU bid submission. We look forward to receiving the final document at the end of February and I have every confidence that the FRU will submit a professional and robust bid that will seek to meet all the World Rugby requirements.

“We’ve been impressed by many aspects of the bid preparation and there is no question that Fiji will offer a very unique and passionate bid for our EXCO to consider when determining the host unions for the next World Series hosting cycle. “O’Connor added “We still have a lot of work to do but we remain on track to submit our bid at the end of February. We will be making further announcements at that time.” -Fiji Rugby Union