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'After careful consideration we have cancelled our 2021 domestic competition'
By Paul Smith
Fijian rugby’s governing body FRU has announced it will not resume domestic competition this year due to risks relating to COVID-19.
Instead, the Pacific Island nation is planning to make an early kick-off to its 2022 campaign.
This comes hot on the heels of the news that Samoa will not travel to London to face the Barbarians at Twickenham next month as planned. Instead, a Samoan XV drawn from players based in Europe will fulfil the fixture for which upwards of 35,000 tickets are already believed to have sold.
FRU Chief Executive John O'Connor said plenty of thought had gone into the cancellation with player welfare being the paramount consideration.
"Even though we have received the approval and certification for a safe return to training and play last Friday October 1, after thorough consultation and careful consideration we have decided to cancel our 2021 domestic competition," he said.
"From Monday October 4 we were allowed to commence non-contact training in the field and training in the gym with limited numbers of 20 people at any one time, only for fully vaccinated players, coaches and management of teams.
"We expect full contact training to be allowed when Fiji achieves 80 per cent of full vaccination and we look forward to the announcement of such relaxation.
“When such an announcement is made, fully vaccinated players and their coaches will be allowed to commence full contact training."
O'Connor said it is therefore impossible to complete any form of domestic competition safely this year, and the FRU plans to launch their competition early next year.
"We have seriously considered player welfare and safety especially since there has been no training for the last six months,” he said.
“Due to the importance of ensuring compliance to the strict safe return to train and play guidelines we have advised all our affiliate unions that we will not be recommencing our Skipper, Vanua and Women's Competitions this year.
"We plan to kick off next year’s competition early in March and have urged unions to focus on their off-season training and prepare accordingly."
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Agree with Wilson B- at best. And that is down to skilled individual players who know how to play the game - not a cohesive squad who know their roles and game plan. For those who claim that takes time to develop, the process is to keep the game plan simple at first and add layers as the squad gels and settles in to the new systems. Lack of progress against the rush D, lack of penetration and innovation in the mid-field, basic skill errors and loose forwards coming second in most big games all still evident in game 14 of the season. Hard to see significant measureable progress.
Go to commentsKeep telling yourself that. The time for a fresh broom is at the beginning - not some "balanced, incremental" (i.e. status quo) transition. All teams establish the way forward at the beginning. This coaching group lacked ideas and courage and the players showed it on the pitch. Backs are only average. Forwards are unbalanced and show good set piece but no domination in traditional AB open play. Unfortunately, Foster - Mark 2. You may be happy with those performances and have some belief in some "cunning plan" but I don't see any evidence of it. Rassie is miles ahead and increasing the gap.
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