Fiji Sevens rated just 5 out of 10 for fitness

Fiji men’s 7s coach Osea Kolinisau, who is in a race against time to help defend the country’s Olympic Games sevens gold medal in Paris this summer, has rated the players fitness currently at just five out of ten.

Getting the players in the right physical shape was mentioned by Gareth Baber, who coached the squad to gold in Tokyo to back up their 2016 gold in Rio. Baber has been drafted in to oversee the Olympic preparations, supporting Kolinisau whose next challenge is the Singapore leg of the HSBC SVNS.

Kolinisau replaced the sacked Ben Gollings in March and Hong Kong was his first tournament in charge. He told the Fiji Times at training this week: “Maybe we are around five right now in a scale of one to 10, we are not there yet.

“This session is just to see where the boys left off and we want to continue from there. We are not there yet, we are still working on our fitness, on our tackle techniques and it’s good to see the boys all in.

“We felt like we gave that tournament (Hong Kong) away, we had our chances. We had six miss-tackles which was too much.

“We were up 12-7 against New Zealand and we had four straight opportunities to capitalise on and I think if we had scored another try, we should have finished that game off. It comes with time and the boys will have to learn the lessons the hard way, some are teachable, but some will be learnt when they play. “

Veteran Jerry Tuwai, the double gold medal-winning playmaker, is taking part in training hoping for a recall.