FORMER FIJI Water Flying Fijians coach Simon Raiwalui is the new high performance general manager for World Rugby.
Raiwalui confirmed this while speaking at the Prime Minister’s International Business Awards night in Nadi on Saturday.
The former national skipper led Fiji to the quarter-final at the recent Rugby World Cup in France.
Raiwalui, who flew back to Australia yesterday, said he was looking forward to his new role.
“I am joining World Rugby as the manager high performance,” he said.
“It is something that I really invested in, the development and pathways of rugby, so I will be working worldwide. But like I have mentioned before hopefully one day I will be back in Fiji.” Raiwalui said coaching the Flying Fijians to the world cup was a memorable experience.
“Coaching the Flying Fijians is memorable. There are some interesting characters.
“The proudest moment for me was to see them grow every day. As a team, as individuals, we wanted them to express them[1]selves, we didn’t want them to be limited.
“So, like I said from the start. Who are we? We are the Flying Fijians.
“Who we want to be? We want to represent Fiji and make every Fijian proud.”
He played for Fiji 39 times from 1997-2006 scoring four tries.
Raiwalui also represented the Pacific Islanders team in 2006 where they played three Test
