“Now we have a platform here on our doorstep. That’s important to grow the game and just catch up with other tier-one nations around the world,” he said.
Fiji Rakavi Football Union (FRU) Rugby director Koli Sewabu has urged the Fijian Drua to play unstructured rugby when the need arises.
He told SUNsports on Monday the Drua was the first professional rugby team to be playing on Fijian soil and praised the team for their 28-24 win over the Chiefs last Saturday:
“Now I’m looking forward to another exciting week (against the Brumbies) and that will help set the foundations for the future,” said Sewabu.
“It has been around for some time that Fijian rugby has always been around unstructured rugby:
“Then over the years, we’ve tried to incorporate some structures and some game plan. It is not just about us, but to meet what the other top tier nations are throwing at us,” the former Naitasiri head coach said.
“Scrum has improved a lot but our lineouts and mauls are something we still need to work on especially on our defence structures. Moreover, it’s just the ability for our players to play week in and week out, having the consistency at that platform.
“Just gaining the confidence and the exposure to do so and over time, it’ll come. It’s a matter of players learning and sharing in that space that there’s a balance between structure and unstructured rugby:”
Sewabu said that while coaches in the country are trying to instill more structures, they should not take away the game we love to play the most.
“We want to play unstructured rugby, when the opportunity arises.”
He said the whole concept of the Drua is to build a professional setup in the country because over the years Fiji Rugby always ventured out to go and play overseas.
“Now we have a platform here on our doorstep. That’s important to grow the game and just catch up with other tier-one nations around the world,” he said.
“It’s been more than three years and most people don’t understand that it takes longer than that to build a solid high-performance team from scratch. So far, they’re (Drua) not off the mark,” he said.
“They can meet game demands that are required to compete consistently week in and week out at that level.”
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