Speaker of the House Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu has called on Attorney-General Siromi Turaga to ensure the wellbeing of Fiji rugby players travelling for tournaments overseas.
In Parliament on Thursday, Ratu Naiqama said he had witnessed the Fiji rugby 7s team sleeping at the Sydney Airport while they were travelling to the Dubai 7s tournament last year.
“Honourable Attorney-General, I would be grateful if you take note of that because that was what the coach Ben Gollings and Viliame Satala and the rest of the team encountered while they were in Dubai,” said Ratu Naiqama.
“It is a sad occasion. Being champions and being highly placed in the sevens ranking and then they had to sleep on the verandas of the airport in Sydney because as soon as the last aircraft comes in, they close down.
“Everybody must go outside including the Fiji team. Yet when we arrived in Dubai they were glorified again.”
He said he also noticed how the boys were fatigued from the lack of proper rest resulting in their poor performance at the tournament.
The side lost to New Zealand in the third-place play-off in December.
“What we had encountered while we went to Dubai for the COP28 meeting was the Fiji team that slept on the corridors of the airport. There was no money,” Ratu Naiqama.
“They did not have their warmup and warm down. I was asked to deliver their jerseys to them. That was the same thing they wore to their warm-up before they played and they wore that right to the game and they lost.”
