FORMER national 7s coach Ben Ryan said it was time to franchise the abbreviated code and make the most of the Fiji 7s team’s status as the most marketable team in the world.

“What we must remember is the massive brand Fiji 7s is. It is iconic. We play 7s like no other team,” Ryan said.

“It has a gold medal winning team behind it. We are double world champions, the boys have come from nowhere, we’ve got a book in production at the moment and a feature film around it.

“It’s a case now of making the most of it. We haven’t got the financial clout behind it. We should … being Olympic champions.” “I’m not making it personal but I’m saying this for the benefit of the player. The people outside Fiji, they see the bigger picture now, they see the potential, it’s time to take the next step and move the Fijian team to the next chapter.

“It would scare the living daylights out of the other teams if Fiji suddenly has more money than everybody else and we are using it properly, with proper facilities and we have an academy. The other teams wouldn’t have a chance.”

Now an HSBC ambassador, Ryan said the franchise would allow our national sevens rugby players to earn as much money than every player in the series.

“I think we just need to be humble and accept that the sevens team would be a bit better off in the commercial hands and run professionally.

“And for that to happen we need FRU to agree that, I hope they do if they want the team to be winning the world series every year.

Ryan said he knew a lot of sponsors, mainly overseas-based, who would want to sponsor the team but would not do so if it involved F RU.

This, he added, was due to previous financial history of the FRU.

“FRU really do need to swallow their pride for the betterment of the team and the nation’s team we need to allow this to happen,” Ryan said.

The first step, Ryan said, was to form a body that would run the franchise.

“I’m sure there would be various people that can come on board. I know some very good people that would run it very well commercially.

“And we would pour huge amounts of money to the program, the boys would be paid better than any other player in other nations, it’s up to the FRU.”

Ryan said the top player in our sevens team would be earning at least 10 times less than the top player in the world.

“That’s not right. We are the best team in the world. Now our standard of living is not 10 times worse costing than United Kingdom or South Africa so you know they are being underpaid compared to what everybody else is on and everybody knows that,” Ryan said.

He added that some of our players have signed contracts for $10,000 for the series.