WITH less than a week of preparation, the FIJI Water Flying Fijians turned their negatives into positive with focus on disciplining their weaknesses from last week’s Test.
Head coach Mick Byrne was particularly impressed with how the players responded to the short preparation time they had and improvements in their set-pieces.
“The positive of having a short turn around is that everyone stays fresh, everyone’s mind stays on the job, got to sharpen up, no chance to relax or no chance to take your eyes off the ball. Things come around pretty quick and before you know it you’re back in the game and it was really pleasing today.
“Very pleased. I think we all know that the players were disappointed. They set about a task this week and they did it. It’s a tough job when you have very little prep in some of the intricate parts of the game.
“I think when we got through this week and the disappointment of players from not getting some things right last week, they put their heads down and got on with it. I thought I was really pleased with the response the forwards had today,” he said during the post-match press conference.
Fiji had a shaky start with a number of handling errors but the message at halftime from the coaching staff brought some confidence back in their game.
“I think when you try to make things happen, you tend to make more mistakes and we are disciplining those up. The good thing was at halftime, we just said to the players to keep going, hang on to the ball, build the momentum and eventually the scores will come, we just got to keep playing. I think that takes a lot of courage when things aren’t going your way, you just stay disciplined and keep playing the game,” Byrne added.
Byrne also acknowledged the more than 10,000 people that turned up to watch the game and support the team yesterday.
With the July Test window done, the next task now for the Flying Fijians is the Pacific Nations Cup in August.
