Tani disappointed with Adelaide 7s outing March 22, 2010
Fiji 7s coach Iliesa Tanivula is disappointed with the team's performance in Adelaide 7s during the weekend and says the players have only themselves to blame for the dismal outing.
“We had the opportunity to catch up on the points table and keep our hopes of winning the Series strong. But our performance was disappointing, we did not start off well in the tournament and made a lot of mistakes in all our games, mistakes that we had ironed out during training,” Tanivula said.
Fiji lost to Wales in their opening pool game 12-17 but went on to win their two remaining games against Papua New Guinea (41-0) and Kenya (21-7)
They were runners up behind Wales in their pool and faced Australia in the quarterfinals.
Australia’s last minute surge saw them boot Fiji out of the Cup contention and into the plate semi finals against arch rivals New Zealand. Australia won 26-22 by scoring their winning try in the last few seconds of the match.
In the plate semifinal, Gordon Tietjen’s men dominated the first half and Fiji’s comeback in the second half was not enough to book them a spot in the plate final as the Kiwis won 24-21 and marched on to win the plate beating South Africa 21-14.
“A lot of things went wrong for us, from our first game against Wales the boys were caught completely off guard. The plan was to stamp our mark but mistakes from losing re-starts to poor defence, ball retention and possession failed us,” Tanivula said.
“We improved against Papua New Guinea and Kenya but against Australia was disappointing because we had that game in the bag. We failed to play till the last whistle.”
“Our second half comeback against New Zealand was not enough for us. Again it was areas like ball retention knock on, support play, our one on one defence that let us down.”
Fiji lies at third spot in the IRB World 7s Series standings with 74 points behind leaders New Zealand with 96 points and second placed Samoa with 94 points.
“Our last chance of keeping our hopes of winning the Series alive rests in our outing in Hong Kong. If we lose that then we can kiss the Series title goodbye,” Tanivula said.
“Now we go back and watch our games, see where we went wrong and try to iron them out in less than a week before the Hong Kong 7s.”
The Hong Kong 7s kicks off on Friday.
Fiji is pooled with Thailand, Portugal and Adelaide 7s finalists USA. They play their first game on Friday at 10:14pm against Thailand.
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