The fact that Fiji 7s men’s coach Ben Gollings says strength and conditioning is not the reason for the team’s recent below par performance on the World Rugby Sevens Series will be met with scepticism.
He says it is due to players not “making smart decisions” at crunch time. The team has copped flak from rugby critics over the past few tournaments for not recovering well between games and burning out.
Following their Hong Kong 7s silver medal finish last November, the side has failed to reach the final in the past four tournaments – finishing eighth in Cape Town. Gollings this week defended the team’s conditioning, saying nothing had changed since they were crowned world champions last year.
“I don’t think it’s an issue for us,” the former England 7s captain said. “We’re not losing games because of our condition. We’re losing games because we’ve not made smart decisions. “We’re not playing the way we talk about playing, but we can correct that and in terms of our physical condition, we can match any side on the world series.”
He said the game had evolved rapidly and senior players were being put to the test with the hectic season. Following on from the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, in August last year, the side heads to the US 7s for the final leg of the 2021-22 series in August.
The RWC 7s was next in September before the side headed to Hong Kong for the start of the 2022-23 series in November. “We haven’t stopped since we started 12 months ago. And usually you get a good break and you can really build the players again.
“We’ve had to manage the fact that we’ve only had two and a half weeks off after the world cup before we were back in camp training. That’s not an excuse. “We got to keep working but you got to understand what the players are going through both mentally and physically. It’s a lot to keep pushing through that time.”
Gollings has a bit over two weeks to prepare a team for the American leg of the series and fans will be hoping we return to the winner’s podium in Los Angeles and Vancouver. “We’ll keep building through this year and you know our target as we said before is we want to qualify, which I’m confident we’ll do and then we’ll look towards the Olympics in 2024.”
The LA 7s will be held on February 25-26 followed by the Vancouver event on March 3-5. In Las Vegas, Fiji is pooled with Japan, Kenya and Australia. We are scheduled to take on the might of Japan in our first game at 7.05am on February 26 (Fiji time) before facing Kenya at 10.18am and Australia at 2.05pm.
Fans will be banking on Gollings and the team to come clean and make things happen at the 7s series. However, in saying that, we are also reminded about the fact that teams have actually improved.
They know what to expect from Fiji. and they are testing our resolve to win games. We say go Fiji, go.
