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Fiji 7s wing Nacuqu suffers season ending injury
By Chris Jones
The problems continue to pile up for Gareth Baber the Fiji Sevens coach who has now lost wing Waisea Nacuqu with a fractured collar bone which rules him out of the rest of the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series.
Also out of the opening pool game of this weekend’s leg in Vancouver is Aminiasi Tuimaba who was deemed to have made a dangerous tackle against New Zealand in the quarter-final clash at the Las Vegas Sevens. Tuimaba missed two of the games in Las Vegas leaving him one more to complete his ban. The USA retained the Las Vegas title with Fiji, the defending Olympic champions ending up sixth.
This leaves Fiji third in the standings behind the USA and New Zealand with a top four finish at the end of the Series earning automatic qualification for the Olympic Games in Japan next year,
The loss of Nacuqu has been even harder to accept because the player who caused the damage was not sent off. Baber was adamant it should have been a red card for Australian skipper Lewis Holland, who was later cited and suspended for three games by World Rugby. The referee missed the high hit by and Holland stayed on the pitch to help Australia win 26-15 with Nacuqu expected to be out for 3-4 months.
Fiji Rugby Union chief executive John O’Connor is back the team to defend the Vancouver title and said: “We are third on the table and hopefully the boys defend the Vancouver title this weekend.”
The one bright spot from a damaging Las Vegas Sevens was the continued excellence of Jerry Tuwai who was voted into the team of the tournament after delivering more of his trademark play-making skills for Fiji. The defence of the Vancouver title starts with pool games against the much improved Samoa team that lost the Las Vegas final to USA, the cash strapped Kenyan squad and hosts Canada.
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we need a damaging 12 that takes 2 men to tackle that will take pressure off the 10 while also creating space for the 10 and 13 . Leicester is the only guy that fits the mould . The next thing is " will he be able to develop a good offload " ? .
for 13 Joey manu has more x factor then reiko and jordie put togeather . he's got one season in japan before he looks to come home . he's a dark horse but his skill set is something the All Blacks don't have . if he comes home and lights up the npc in a game or 2 , id love to see him fast tracked and come off the bench for the All Blacks and thrown into the deep end to see if he can swim . Just to see if he's worth the time and effort to develop further . We all saw how good sualii did for the wallabies and joey manu is just as good as sualii . He's safe under the high ball , a solid defender , has a master offload , and he's fast and strong .
he fits the mould for razor's offload tactics .
Plus reiko and jordie have had the 12 & 13 for how long and I haven't seen anything special from either of them .
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