Fiji Airways Fijiana player, Mereula Torooti is set to make her debut at the HSBC World Women’s 7s Series Canada Tournament when it kicks off in Langford today.

Fiji Airways Fijiana Coach, Iliesa Tanivula was impressed with the Nawairabe, Nasikawa, Navosa na­tive’s performance at last year’s Oceania Rugby 7s championship in Suva and says this is her opportu­nity to show off her talent and stake her claim in the team.

The team are in final prepara­tion mode before the HSBC World Women’s 7s Canada tournament kicks off and Tanivula says that that the weather has been very cold and that apart from training, the girls have been acclimatising well.

“We arrived a few days earlier then the tournament proper and that has been a real blessing as we have been acclimatizing to the weather and trying to set out body clock in motion was a priority so we could get on with training,” Tanivula said.

“It is spring time here in Canada but in Fiji standards it is very cold. The good thing though is that the sun was out most of the days which the girls enjoyed and made things a little bit easier at training.”

Tanivula added that he has had to readjust their training sessions for the team to adjust not only to the weather but to the artificial turf as well.

“After a few days here, I believe we have slowly adjusted to the cli­mate. The artificial turf is some­thing to consider on game day and we just have to adjust a few tactical and technical stuff to deal with the opposing teams in our pool with England first up, then Brazil and then NZ,” he said.

“We have also being concentrat­ing more on what we can do as a team in attack and defense.”

During their meeting, the team was in agreement that they wanted to improve on their last perfor­mance from Kitakyushu in Japan.

“To go one better than that and improve on our overall standing in the World Series is what we want to achieve this weekend,” Tanivula said.

“We have made five changes from the last two tournament and we are trying to fit them in on combina­tions that work best for the team either as in the starting seven or coming off the bench.

“All three teams in our pool are tough and we cannot look past them. So we just got to take each game one at a time and play to the best of our ability.”

The Fiji Airways Fijiana team is in Pool A with defending champions New Zealand, England and Brazil.