RWC Diary Day 6 - Fathers' Day 04 September, 2011

(L-R) Kini Murimurivalu and Gabiriele Lovobalavu preparing Fathers' Day lunch.

Sunday in the land of the long white cloud, in a place where you have to wait for the water to warm up before it’s cool enough to drink, where you switch the air-condition on to warm the room and the blankets in bed are electric.

Today’s our last day in beautiful yet cold Ohope. Tomorrow (Monday) morning we’re on the bus heading for Tauranga where our Rugby World Cup (RWC) campaign truly begins as we slot into the official RWC schedule. Our stay in Ohope has been fairly low key, away from the main city areas the team has been able to keep to themselves without the distractions offered by fans, friends or relatives.

However being the sixth largest suburban area in New Zealand, Tauranga has a population of 120,000 people and it’s likely the team, and the team manager in particular, will be challenged trying to keep the team focused on its impending opening RWC clash with Namibia; as well as trying to appease the myriad of demands that are likely to come in not only from those mentioned above, but also from local organizations and charities.

A commitment though has already been made by all involved in this campaign – from the management and the players - that the focus will be on each and every game in the RWC and requests, outside of the Flying Fijians current RWC schedule, are unlikely to be approved.

Lotu this morning was led, as it has been every day in New Zealand, by Reverend Joji Rinakama and today being Father’s Day all the non-fathers were asked to sing a song to all the fathers in the team and, to be fair, the non-fathers were in pretty good voice despite being few in number.

Lunch was an in-house affair with the team cooking lunch for themselves, which included the several large fish caught by a few of the players yesterday afternoon. In the end the lunch prepared would have rivaled anything from any top notch restaurant – baked fish, pork curry, chicken drumstick, fried pork and more.

Anyway from Fijian sons and daughters here in Ohope, New Zealand to all fathers in Fiji – Happy Fathers’ Day!

Moce mada. 

View the gallery of the Flying Fijians in New Zealand

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RWC Diary Day 5 - LIttlejohn and Tietjens