PREPARATION time is set to become a decisive selection criterion for the Fiji Water Flying Fijians squad for the upcoming Nations Championships, according to head coach Mick Byrne.
“Unfortunately, for the Nations Championships, we’ll come together the week before. Last year, when we played Australia, we had three training sessions together before we played. Australia had 30 days together, so that’s probably one of the things that is our challenge and we are working around that,” he explained.
“That’s why selection becomes paramount. We need to be able to trust the players we select. We need to know that they’ll come in and they’ll do the work.”
He added that a player’s ability to fit the team’s playing style will also be a crucial prerequisite for his final selection.
“They’ll buy into what we’re trying to do, and they’ll commit to what we’re doing. That’s part of our selection. Selecting players who we know we can trust, who will buy into what we’re doing, and we can trust them on the field,” he said.
Byrne expects a more demanding competition standard than what the team has been accustomed to.
“Ball-in-play time at the moment is 38 minutes of ball-in-play time, which is higher than any other level, higher than some Super Rugby levels. It’s not necessarily just the ball-in-play, it’s what’s going on in that time,” he said.
“How fast the players need to run around the ground, how fast they need to move around the ground and their ability to play the game at what we would classify as game speed, not just survive 80 minutes of football. One of the key things for us is to make sure that we continually grow in that area.”
Byrne has acknowledged the significant strides in defence but stressed that constant growth and evolution in defensive patterns need to be a priority if the team is to keep up with the constantly evolving attacking strategies devised by leading rugby nations to stay ahead of the competition.
“The other thing, I think our game has worked on our defences. Especially in face play, we’ve been able to work harder, get around the corner, be in front of the attacking team a lot more than we were last year (2024). That’s been an improvement in our game, and we’ll continue to grow that part of our role,” said Byrne.
