Gold Coast performance can be repeated: Dere

By Sunil Sharma

Despite retaining only  four members from the victorious Gold Coast 7s team, Fiji coach Alifereti Dere believes his players can achieve similar feat in Dubai and Port Elizabeth.

Player of the tournament, Joji Ragamate, Ilai Tinai, Alipate Ratini and captain Lepani Botia are the only players from the opening leg in the 24-member squad and Dere believes the new players will add more dimension and flair to their game in the UAE and South Africa.

"All our players are equally capable and it is just a matter of combination, dedication, teamwork and enthusiasm," said Dere.

"When we took our team to Gold Coast, nobody gave us a chance but now since we have won, everyone is jumping up and down and saying that we should retain this player and  all but we have our strategic plan in place and are building towards the World Cup and want to test out all the players."

"With a new-look team, we defied all odds to retain our title and we hope to repeat the same performance in the upcoming matches."

"There are still some areas in which we need some polishing and we are working accordingly to ensure that we prepare and send our strongest team possible to Dubai and South Africa."

"We noticed that we were penalized a lot during kick-offs in Gold Coast and this contributed to our loss to Australia in the last pool game."

"The boys are working on this and we should be all good before the upcoming tournaments," he added.

The Digicel Fiji 7s team will fly out to Dubai in the last week of November with tournament to be played on November 30 and December 1st.

FijiLive