Fiji Rugby women coaching director Chris Cracknell continues to be happy with the performance of the Telecom Fijiana team in the Women Sevens Series.

Cracknell knows, with the three remaining legs in Atlanta (April 8-9), Langford (April 16-17) and Clermont Ferrand (May 28-29), the team should be on the right course when the Rio Olympics starts in August.

Fiji reached the Cup quarterfinals for the second time in the series only to go down 10-0 to Australia, who they lost to earlier in pool play 26-17.

The Ana Maria Roqica-captained team maintained the momentum thrashing England 26-12 in the Plate semifinal but lost to France 17-5 in the Plate final in Sao Paulo, Brazil yesterday.

“Given the destruction by Tropical Cyclone Winston in Fiji over the last few days I’m immensely proud of the girls and their courage and endeavour throughout the tournament,” Cracknell said.

“A lot of the players have not been able to reach family members and have seen their homes destroyed while being so far away from home which has been tough on them.

“They have, however, pulled their socks up and got on with the job at hand with the desire to do their country proud.

“I’d like to thank everyone back home in Fiji for their support given the current events and for everyone to know that you’ve been in our thoughts and prayers over the last three days.”

Playing against Australia, who are number one at the moment, Fiji has improved a lot but lacked the ability to get a firm grip on the basics in all their games.

“I’m happy with our improvement; we had two close games against Australia and our best score lines against them ever. They are number one at the moment so our games against them are a good measure of where we are at,” he said.

“We’ve improved from Dubai and were without a key player in Asinate Savu. The girls here all performed well and can hold their heads up high and proud.

“They have already spoken of how they know their basics were a fundamental problem this weekend but the girls are now fitter and stronger than ever before.

“However, the area I feel we let ourselves down this weekend was our basics in attack and keeping hold of the ball, which as stated the girls have already picked up on, so they know what needs improving.”

Fiji is still in seventh place on the Women Sevens Series standings with 18 points behind series leaders Australia (40), New Zealand (28), Canada (28), France (26), England (24) and Russia (22).

Edited by Osea Bola

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