FIJI Rugby Football Union has invested heavily in technology this year to better analyse domestic competitions, says acting CEO Koli Sewabu.
As part of their benchmarking work, seven 360-degree cameras worth more than $300,000 were installed in Skipper competition venues.
“So what we’ve done this year, we’ve invested into what we call 7 360 degrees cameras that cost more than $300,000 that we put in all the skipper game venues this year. We’ve captured all those games and what we’ve done, we’ve crammed some data and statistics around the shape of the game.”
He said Fiji Rugby now compares domestic data with top-tier international competitions.
“So we do that as part of our benchmarking, so we analyse all the games happening at international level. We did a lot on the recent Six Nations games from across all the Southern Hemisphere teams that have played in the Northern Hemisphere. We look at all their data and then we create our own data for the skipper and our under-trading competition and then we start to make comparisons and analyse and identify where the gaps are in terms of our performance, technical ability in the domestic front.”
Sewabu said understanding these gaps is crucial for improving performance and preparing Fiji Rugby to compete at Tier 1 level. He reminded that Tier 1 success is built on strong domestic structures, just like New Zealand’s ITM Cup, France’s Top 14, England’s Premiership and others.
“It’s about strengthening our bases, our foundations, and look at how we’re going to build it. It’s not an overnight thing. It’s going to take a couple of years, but we’ve got to have to start somewhere,” Sewabu concluded.
