Ben Gollings says he is confident the Fiji Airways Fiji 7s men’s team can return to winning ways on the 2022-23 HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series.
Sitting in fifth place after five outings and with six tournament remaining, Fiji is yet to register a win this season with the best finish in Hong Kong last November where the side lost to Australia in the final.
With top four qualifier for the Olympics up for grabs, New Zealand leads the race with 85 points, followed by South Africa on 76, Samoa and France on 68 points a piece.
Fiji is on 67 points tied with Argentina.
With the 2024 Olympics held in Paris, France will get automatic qualification as hosts.
Gollings said at the end of the day, the “ultimate” target was winning the series.
“I take a big positive away from the fact that we can be honest with ourselves and know that we’ve not put in the performances that we’re capable of and that we know we can do,” the former England 7s captain said.
“But we’re sitting in top five. And so our focus is to keep developing. We got to consistently be hitting semi-finals and then ultimately hitting finals.
“I’m quite confident that we can turn that around and come the end of the season we’ll hit our target of top four. Ultimate target is we want to actually win this series.
“So there’s still a lot to play for and six tournaments is a lot. We’ve seen how much things can change in just a couple of tournaments. And for us, that is in our control. We will make sure that we go out and we hit targets we want to hit.”
Gollings has a bit over two weeks to prepare a team for the North American leg of the series and return to winner’s podium in Los Angeles and Vancouver.
The LA 7s will be held on February 25-26 followed by the Vancouver event on March 3-5.
In Las Vegas, Fiji is pooled with Japan, Kenya and Australia.
Fiji takes on Japan in their first game at 7.05am on February 26 (Fiji time) before facing Kenya at 10.18am and Australia at 2.05pm.
