Exposure for Vunimono U17

DESPITE losing to Lelean Memorial School 72-0 in the first round of the Eastern Zone rugby competition, the Vunimono High School under-17 team wants to expose their players to schools rugby competition. Manager Eroni Matatia said with the number of iTaukei boys in the school they had opted to form a rugby team to represent them.

“The reason we formed a rugby team was to address discipline issues like punctuality and attendance. Most of these students’ interest is in sports and as we try to improve their academic performance, we introduced rugby to those who are interested,” he said.

“We accept them with one condition and that they are always on time for school and always up to date with their studies.

“We had been participating in soccer competition for the past years and we had seen that only a few players were interested so that was also another idea to get these iTaukei boys to take part in sports.”

Being one of the two new schools taking part in this year’s Eastern Zone rugby competition, Matatia believes they have the talent to go against the big schools.

“We have only one setback and that is we don’t have a proper set of rugby uniform, but we are arranging for that. We are grateful to Lelean for giving us a set of their jersey to wear in the first round.” Matatia said they needed to work on their defence before they take on Queen Victoria School next week. “Our main weakness was our defence, we lack the ability to defend our territory and that resulted in Lelean scoring most of their tries,” Matatia said.