The Fiji Airways Fijian 7s team needs to be mentally tough going into the Hamilton–Sydney cluster of the 2019-20 World Seven Series.

Coach Gareth Baber admitted yesterday the players were physically fit but mentally depressed on game day in the first two tournaments in Dubai and Cape Town last month.

“It’s not our fitness, we were not where we wanted to be in terms of mindset and the tempo of the game that we need to play,” Baber said.

“We allowed the opposition to have too much control and that costs us.

“We had constant pressure that caused indiscipline during the game.

“It was not about fitness but it was about our mindset going into the tournament. We were in better shape leading up to the tournament.

“But we were switched off from the start, no rhythm and we allowed other team to dictate the game,” he said.

“It was not fitness we were mentally depressed so that’s an area we are looking to improve on this time around.”

Baber the players understands the situation they are in going into the Hamilton tournament.

“Players need to switch on throughout.”

The Fiji Airways Fijian 7s team will play Samoa at the FMG Stadium in Waikato at 12.47pm, Australia at 6.35pm on January 25 and Argentina at 11.57am on January 26.

Addressing cards

Baber is working on ways to minimise players getting yellow carded during the third tournament of the World Sevens Series in Hamilton.

The Fiji Airways Fijian 7s coach said players are working on getting it right during training at the Uprising Beach Resort ground.

“We’ve looked at ways to address the issue of getting yellow cards,” he said.

“The players have to understand that there’s a risk in what they do all the time in big tournaments.

“We have a referee here with us on every session.He is here to attend on anything like that.

“The boys know jumping up and knocking the ball down is a yellow card offence.

“It’s this behavior we are trying to get rid off.

“At this level we need extra referee and coaches to teach the players and make them understand the laws of the game.”

Baber added that there are some areas in the game that caused yellow cards which the team is looking to improve on.

“We allowed the opposition to have more balls and that’s where the indiscipline came in.

When you are defending for a long period of time, it’s physically tiring so you look for shortcuts.

“And certainly we’ve been looking for ways to eliminate that and don’t have that as part of our game. They don’t go on the field to do that but its instinct at times,” he said

“There are some drills that we do in training which we have to revisit and look at so we can get the boys in a more discipline way in trying to stop the ball from moving from player to player. We have to continue to work on our tackle height.

“I believe defence was poor for us during those two tournaments.”

Edited by Osea Bola

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