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Fiji Time: 9:21 PM on Wednesday 22 May

/ Front page / Editorial Comment

The plan behind victory

Fred Wesley
Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Former national coach Wayne Pivac certainly had some interesting things to say yesterday about our preparation towards the 2013 7s World Cup in Russia next month.

Pivac, the former Flying Fijians head coach has authority to speak out.

He knows what he's talking about and has the 2005 World Cup title as proof of what he can do.

Pivac hinted that issues over the selection of our teams could have had a hand in our disappointing performance in the 2012/13 International Rugby Board HSBC Sevens World Series.

He says the Fiji Rugby Union has to get that right to win our third World Cup title in Moscow next month.

History will confirm that in the face of major concerns about our ability or inability to do well at the 2005 event, Pivac and his team whipped the national side into top gear, and blew away the opposition.

He has attributed that impressive victory to what he terms, the "right selection" of players.

He wanted the best available players. They were then "bashed into shape" with special emphasis on discipline.

But to do that now, Pivac reckons we need to understand what a winning environment looks like.

An analysis was done on the 2004 and 2005 tournaments before Pivac and his team settled on what their plans would be like.

For the 2004 and 2005 series, they discovered that the national side was losing by a close margin in the finals despite playing with only around 35 per cent possession.

Selection was then based on this information.

It involved profiling of potential players.

The rest is history.

In came the big mobile men to win possession upfront, two playmakers were recruited to play inside our halfback at the time, Jone Daunivucu and they opted for experience and blistering pace out wide.

Pre-tournament camps were centred on discipline, motivational exercises and a lot of hard work.

There was experience, weight, height, skills, pace, and most importantly depth in the squad.

This allowed the coach to vary his starting line-up, keeping the opposition guessing all the time.

The end result spoke highly of this well planned campaign. We won our second World Cup title.

But, as Pivac pointed out, "2005 didn't just happen. Tough decisions were made and a lot of good people rolled up their sleeves and did what they had to get a result that the nation of Fiji was craving for."

We need to get behind our team.

But at the same time, we need to be confident that we have the best available people guiding and directing the best available men on the field.

Go Fiji, go.