Playing on artificial turf will be one of the issues the Vodafone Fijian 7s team will be addressing when they march into camp at the Uprising Beach Resort in Pacific Harbour today.

Coach Ben Ryan said he would be taking extra precaution when selecting his players for the fifth and sixth leg of the 2015-2016 World Sevens Series in Las Vegas and Vancouver in Canada.

“With the artificial fields at the Sam Boyd Stadium in Vegas and the BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, the load on the players would be different,” Ryan said.

“There is more load put through the posterior chain – calves, hamstrings, glutes (exercising involving working out the gluteal muscles)- so we will need to do some specific work around this to protect the boys a bit more from injury.

“The players are not used to playing on artificial turfs which is a lot harder to natural grounds which can stress the body out and allow players to be more susceptible to injuries.

“So I will be a bit more conservative in selection and if I feel any of the players are facing the slightest bit of injury they will be rested or I will be using them sparingly.

“We will also need to adapt to playing on an artificial field because the bounce of the ball will also be slightly different.

“Obviously we will work on our attack and defence as well, we need to be a little more accurate in our defence because we are playing against teams who do not offload very much or not at all compared us.

“So when we train, we usually play against each other where we are offloading more but the teams we play against don’t do that, so we need to change that around, put a structure in place and work on our defence.”

Ryan will also be making the most of the West 7s Series as the Spain national team is in the country for the competition.

“We will be meeting up with the Spain team and hoping to get some live lineouts and scrimmage work,”Ryan said.

Meanwhile, two new U20 players, Frank Lomani and Kaveni Dabenaise, will be joining the team in camp today.