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Sydney plan

THE Fiji 7s will team have its captain’s run at 8am today.

It will not be at the venue of the Sydney 7s, Allianz Stadium which has a seating capacity of 54,000, but a park away from the prying eyes of oppositions and international media.

It will be also the last time the Vodafone Fiji team and its coach Gareth Baber go on the fresh rehearsal of tactics planned this week, especially game plans to counter last week’s weaknesses.

“We have learned a lot from the New Zealand mistakes. It affected the team and let everyone down,” team manager Jone Niurua said.

“In the past few days, we had been practising game situations where we play as full set team, and situations where we will have one or two players sin binned.

“We have covered those areas and what we will do so that we would not be weakened when we face situations like that. We have our Plan B or our emergency plans. We are going for a win and we have covered everything at training and have the captain’s run before the games start on Saturday.”

He said morale in camp had been commendable and with the rest day yesterday, it allowed the players to focus on winning all its pool matches — Samoa, Wales and France. The team had a boat ride to Manly yesterday and were chief guests of the launching of The Golden Fijian public bar beside the games venue.

“We want to cut down mistakes because we start Sydney without Nemani Nagusa and three games ban against Setareki Bituniyata.

Meanwhile, New Zealand sensation Joeli Lutumailagi has called on players to play as a team to end South Africa’s winning run.

“They can be beaten. We could have beaten them in New Zealand. We spoke this week and discussed that there were a lot of individualism in Wellington and we need to work as a team, We will win and I will improve from where I left off last week.”

The jersey presentation will be done tonight and is expected to be conducted by Fiji Rugby Union chairman Francis Kean who would travel to Sydney today with FRU CEO John O’Connor, Niurua said.