Simon Raiwalui is focused on one mission alone — to beat Portugal first and foremost.
Qualifying for the 2023 Rugby World Cup quarter-final will take care of itself.
Not wanting to jinx their chances of a last-eight spot, the former Fiji Test lock forward is sticking to the game plan he put together when he took up the role of FIJI Water Flying Fijians head coach in February this year.
His philosophy is to treat every game as the final, get the basics right and everything will fall into place.
That belief has also rubbed off on the players, led by captain Waisea Nayacalevu.
“I am really just worried about Portugal coming up, we have to take care of business. Prepare well and put on a performance. If we look too far beyond that we are going to slip over,” Raiwalui said.
The win against Georgia last week was scrappy at the least but it also showed the fighting determination to come from 9-0 down to win 17-12 at the end.
Portugal did not give Australia an easy ride in their 14-34 loss, and will be looking to cause an upset.
Our match against Georgia exposed a few glitches in our armour.
Our line-outs were in disarray early on in the match — we lost five of our throws before we found the mark.
Our first-choice flyhalf Teti Tela failed miserably with his kicking and will need to sharpen up.
We also missed a lot of tackles, allowing Georgia to gain metres on us.
There are some positives from the match.
After four rounds, the side currently averages the most dominant collisions per game with 44.3, but they have also come into the tournament with a rock-solid scrum — the only one at RWC 2023 with a 100 per cent success rate.
Also key to Fiji’s success is the fact they average the most turnovers per game (8.3), and are all the way down in 16th for possession kicked away (45 per cent) which shows that they are adept at winning the ball from their opponents — and keeping hold of it.
The side is also the most disciplined to date — conceding 24 penalties — that’s an average of eight penalties in the three matches.
The stats show that we can mix it up front.
“People think of Fiji and they think of fast-flowing and scoring incredible tries from our own try-line but, as we’ve seen at this World Cup, to win these games, it’s set-piece first,” hooker Sam Matavesi said.
Portugal also showed up for the game against Australia.
They stole two of the Wallabies’ line-out throws, won two of Australia’s scrums and dominated possession and territory.
The Wallabies got the better of the side with a one-man advantage due to a yellow card.
While Fiji may be favourites on the cards, Raiwalui knows it will take more to cement their place in the play-offs.
