LATELY, I am not very happy with some of Gareth Baber’s comments in regard to the Fijian sevens team, especially without winning any tournament after the fifth round.

This begins to mount a lot of pressure on the team itself in defending their world series title.

First, he said, he is not leaving out the option of getting players from overseas and this stand of his met a lot of criticism from the fans for the fact that there is an abundance of talent available locally that he can develop just like what Ben Ryan did, which resulted in Fiji winning the series.

Apart from some other comments he made, I would like to specially highlight what he said in The Fiji Times 10/02/17 through an article by Elenoa Baselala titled Fiji 7s team next job, “The Fijian boys are no different than the Welsh boys or any other team, they are all the same.”

I believe this comment of Baber shows that he is still yet to learn more.

For in Ryan’s case he was able to understand the uniqueness of the Fijian boys by understanding their culture and tradition and he knew that they were different from the English boys and, therefore, he usually addressed them differently especially when under pressure.

Please Baber do understand that the Fijian boys are not the same as the Welsh or any other team.

They are unique in their own individual ways and as a team, which is something that should be appreciated rather than comparing them wrongly with others.