Fiji Pearls specialist coach Yvette McCausland-Durie is impressed with the players’ attitude and willingness to learn during the week-long training camp that concluded last weekend.
It was her first assignment as a specialist coach as she assessed the players on their performance in court, individual skill sets, and players conditioning.
The Fiji Pearls were zoned in from day one of the training camp and it was obvious to Yvette how focused and determined these girls were beginning of the camp.
“The things I’m most impress with is really good coach ability, these players are so open to learning and putting things into practice, the willingness is there to work for each other and support each other,” she said.
She had no intention of changing the style or rhythm of play the Pearls are known for, but she aims to polish it and help further develop the skills they already have.
“I just want to learn about each player and understand how they want to play the game their way and I’ll just try and compliment that skill set they already got, just keep encouraging them to be confident which is a challenge, but with confidence, they’ll continue to grow.”
She added the players conditioning was a key factor she noticed that the team lacked.
She reiterated that the skill level was there and added that without proper conditioning, it would be tough for the player to compete at a high level tournament.
“Conditioning wise, I think we need to be better to survive a tough tournament,” McCaussland-Durie said.
“We’re really clear to play at the next level, but we just need to make sure conditioning wise, we can sustain, so good opportunity going ahead and we’ve got four more camps to go. For a team to be successful she believes that it comes down to a group of individuals to own their job.
“So it’s about role clarity and the ability for a player to own their job and when you’ve got that then you’ve really contributed to the collective and that ability to create a really good team performance.”
She concluded that she’ll be looking at the combination, how well the players execute their own job and how they put that into the team environment which will be the main focus during the pre-world cup training camps.
