Tanivula - many positives 15 December, 2010

(L-R) Seremaia Burotu and Sitiveni Waqa flank an admiring fan.

A tired Digicel Fiji 7s team manager Sale Sorovaki returned to Fiji today with the Digicel Fiji 7s team after a mammoth journey from George in South Africa. 

“We left George on Sunday morning so we’ve been travelling for three days basically, so yeah we’re pretty shattered I’ve never been on such a long journey before,” Sorovaki said. 

The team return from the first leg of the IRB World Sevens Series with two semi-final finishes. It’s a performance coach, Iliesa Tanivula, admits his players can draw many positives from. 

“We can take a lot of positives from the two tournaments as we went in as a young team, as everyone knows, and they played above their weight,” Tanivula said. 

However Tanivula admits the fact they were not able to finish off teams in both tournament semi finals was disappointing and believes the team will need to do more work on the mental aspects of their game. 

“There was a lot of disappointment after those two losses in the semi final, the boys were really down, but we’ve got to look at ourselves again preparation-wise we’ve got to regroup and step up our mental focus.” 

While Tanivula believes the experienced players in his side were the backbone of the team he has particular praise for player of the tournament in George – Seremaia Burotu. 

“He’s really grown as a player and on and off the field he’s been great and he’s really led the team well.” 

The second leg of the IRB World Sevens Series will kick-off with the Wellington 7s on 4 February next year. The Digicel Fiji 7s team are the defending champions of the Wellington 7s. 

“I think we’ve got to spend some time together as a team and learn from our mistakes and hopefully come Welllington we’ll be ready to go,” Tanivula said. 

The Wellington 7s will be followed by the Las Vegas 7s from 12-13 February which will complete the second leg of the IRB World Sevens Series.

View interview with Digicel Fiji 7s  coach Iliesa Tanivula.