Vodafone Flying Fijians head coach John McKee will tour Europe in March to visit players in their respective clubs. McKee revealed to SUNsports yesterday his plans on getting the Vodafone Flying Fijians squad ready for the new season.

“We are keeping track on our potential Flying Fijians in competitions across the world. With Northern Hemisphere competitions in progress I’m watching many games in those competitions each week. I will be travelling across to watch the games live and visit players at their clubs.”

McKee said the immediate focus is to prepare players for the Test matches against the Wallabies on June 10 in Melbourne, Australia followed by Italy and Scotland games here.

Then next is the Pacific Nations Cup and Rugby World Cup qualifiers against Tonga in Nukua’lofa on July 8 and Samoa in Apia on July 15.

The top two teams in this stream will gain qualification as Oceania 1 and Oceania 2, with the third place team entering a home and away play-off against the winner of Europe’s Round 5 qualification match. The winner on aggregate qualifies as the Europe/Oceania play-off qualifier, whereas the loser will head to the world repechage.

“This will help me to make assessments on their form and fitness and for me to give them specific goals and targets leading towards June selection.

“My plan is to have a short camp here in Fiji before travelling to Melbourne on June 4.

“It is always challenging logistically to get all our players back home from the Northern Hemisphere at the end of their season.

“With the match programme we have there is plenty of motivation for our top players to represent Fiji during June and July,” McKee said.

RWC QUALIFIER

“The RWC qualifiers are of massive importance for us. We started well with wins over Samoa and Tonga last year but I know that this year’s PNC will be challenging as we play both of these Tests matches away,” he said.

“The three tests against Australia, Italy and Scotland will give us a great build-up to the PNC. Our preparation for those Tests will need to be top class to ensure we perform very well to achieve our goal of qualifying to the 2019 RWC this year.”

Edited by Leone Cabenatabua

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