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Fiji prepare for 3-day 'overseas' training camp in Toulouse
By Chris Jones
Fiji head coach John McKee is in France preparing for an important three-day camp with his overseas based players in the build up to the World Cup in Japan.
This is McKee’s first visit to France since he masterminded Fiji’s stunning 21-14 victory over Les Bleus in Paris and he has chosen Toulouse as the base for his training camp (March 4-6) which will be used to assess fitness levels and check on injured players.
With key men of Viliame Mata, Peceli Yato, Vereniki Goneva and Leone Nakarawa making a big impact on European rugby, McKee knows his squad could be a serious threat at the World Cup despite having slipped back to ninth in the world rankings – one below France.
Fiji are in the same World Cup pool as Wales, Australia, Georgia and Uruguay.
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McKee hopes to have around 30 players involved in the camp being held under Regulation 9 release and it is designed to overcome the limitations imposed on Fiji’s preparations for major tournaments with so many players operating overseas. The Fiji Sun reports that McKee will visit French clubs to continue building better relationships with coaches and owners while also seeing a number of Cup squad candidates in action.
McKee said: “We will see some other players who have been on our radar playing well for their respective clubs. If you visit them you have a really good first hand assessment of those players. We don’t only look at the top players, we are starting to look at some groups which are outside the camp. We envisage there will be a couple of guys joining the camp outside the November group.
“There were some who were injured when the November selections were made with the likes of Levani Botia who’s back on the field. Seta Tuivucu who got injured playing against Scotland hasn’t played since, but is now back at full training and he’ll be in camp with us and hopefully he gets a little bit of game time towards the end of their season.
“We have many good local players including a couple of young local Flying Fijians who are on the radar, they are involved in an intensive training program here and we are watching them closely.”
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Latest Comments
The manner of all these comments is that it doesn’t matter who plays No10 for the All Blacks, apparently they are all rubbish!
Seriously, people need to get a grip and stop obsessing over every tiny error made from an overscrutinised position. DMac was good this year for the most part, as was Beauden Barrett. Mo’unga was good last year and would be an asset in the group if he did come back. I don’t see it as an area of concern.
The main concern in 2025 is finding another world class lock and loose forward, followed by some scrutiny over the midfield combination in my view.
Go to commentsI was at this match. Jordie Barrett earned his money with a massive hit to slow a connaught attack to win the math when Leinster had 14 in the last few mins. Mack Hansen had a real go at the refereeing after citing a serious head hits on Iaone and Aki.
connaught were up for this. Snyman tried a trademark dirty after, and the onnaught 4 and the onnaught pack absolutely laid into him.
Leinster hose to kick to the corner when only winning by 5 with 10 left and qith only 2 tries scored. onnaught should have punisihed them for that utter stupidity after they broke out and Leinster yellowed to stop the attack.
13 changes from last week. It seems teams are scoring about 10 points less against Leinster this year. With Neinaber in his second year, the new attack coah established, surely they will be a bigger threat in champions up? Or will the attack recgress further.
They must adopt the SA philosophy of take your 3 pointers and the bonus points will come.
connaught back line inluding Iaone, Murphy, Aki, Forde, cordero is the seond best in Ireland surely. Leinster were lucky here
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