Losing on home soil in front of a crowd of 15,474 people is a painful factor to bear.
Swire Shipping Fijian Drua number eight Elia Canakaivata shared this following their 15-38 loss to the Hurricanes in round nine of the Shop N Save Super Rugby Pacific competition.
For the first time, the Drua played in front of a sell-out crowd in Suva, but the unbeaten Hurricanes turned out the better team on Friday night.
“It’s quite painful to lose at home because when I looked around, I saw a sea of blue everywhere, there was no empty space,” Canakaivata said.
“Our supporters really turned up for the team, we know that some of the people must’ve sacrificed their lunch money for the coming days just to come and watch the Drua and some may have travelled from afar. We are truly thankful for your unwavering support, and we apologise that we could not give you a win.”
The 27-year-old is raring to start the coming week fresh and improve on his performance.
“Next week we go again, we made a lot of defensive blunders and handling errors close to the opponents tryline so, we have to work on that.”
The strong running Canakaivata was easily one of the best performers from the Drua on Friday and although he was denied two driving attempts at the try-line, his efforts were recognised as he scooped the player of the match award.
