THE sight of a young Flying Fijians team lining up against Scotland at Murrayfield and beating Wales in Cardiff for the first time are the standout moments for head coach Mick Byrne from this rugby season.
2024 was a busy rugby year for Byrne who moved from the Fijian Drua to the Flying Fijians coaching helm, taking on a demanding role that is often under public scrutiny.
With little time on his hands, the unavailability of players for certain tours and the number of tasks he had to meet, Byrne had to put together a young team with a majority from the Drua.
“We had all the Drua players played against Scotland, and I thought that was outstanding. We had only six players there that just had only 10 Super Rugby games between them,” he said in an interview with this newspaper.
Reflecting on this factor from the coaching box on November 3 created a core memory for Byrne.
“Just watching them out there on the field during the national anthem and when the second verse of the Scotland anthem came on, the lights go out and the crowd was singing along, it was quite an intimidating scene. I looked down and saw these young guys there, experiencing something that special, I was proud of them.
“At the beginning of the year the last thing they thought of was probably representing Fiji in such a big game so that was a pretty special moment,” he shared.
A week later the whole of Fiji rejoiced at what some called a sweet Rugby World Cup revenge against Wales on their home turf.
“We brought in our overseas players in the beginning of the Wales week, and we had a really good week. We bonded together really quickly, there’s a lot of professionalism in our environment now, they just got on and do the work.
“Getting to Cardiff, again the Northern Hemisphere sides when you’re playing in front of their sellout crowd, singing the national anthem, the whole build up to the game was exceptional and then for us to put in the performance was really special so probably for me was those two weeks for different reasons but I guess beating Wales for the first time in Cardiff was pretty special,” Byrne said.
With a success rate of seven wins out of 10 Tests, Byrne is hopeful for more Tier One Tests in the coming rugby season.
