Paradise Beverages will sponsor the Fiji Bitter Malomalo 7s at Lawaqa Park, Sigatoka on April 16-17.

The sponsorship worth $10,000 was described by Malomalo Rugby president Josese Voce as a ‘milestone.’

“This is a milestone achievement for Malomalo. Looking back, in the 90s we started the tournament with 16 teams competing for $500 and over the years we slowly grew,” he said.

“This historic partnership with Fiji Bitter will go a long way and with such a great sponsorship we are blessed to have them on board.

“It will definitely lift up our standards in terms of organising the tournament and making sure we succeed.

“ Now it’s time to do the hard yards so we will return back to the village and plan on how to it happen.

“ It’s good that we have met with Mr Rodan who also is a huge help to us in how to run the tournament.

“The ball is on our court and we will try and run the tournament well and make it an annual event.

“We want to stamp our mark in Fijian rugby 7s calendar every year.”

Paradise Beverages Fiji general manager sales and corporate affairs Joseph Rodan believes more untapped talents can be exposed in Nadroga.

“This is the first time that we are sponsoring Malomalo 7s and it’s one of the policies that we set out this year is that we want to sponsor at least 16 Fiji Bitter-sponsored tournaments and that will be in all the provinces in Fiji,” he said.

“I want to thank the officials for this because we are taking sevens rugby to Nadroga so we want to show the people in Nadroga how sevens is organised.

“I believe Malomalo rugby has been organizing this tournament for some years now but this is the first time we have gone into partnership with Malomalo Village.

“We believe it’s a good step forward and we also believe it will improve the standard of rugby sevens in Nadroga.

“We know that Nadroga is a rugby province and we have a lot of good players and by sponsoring the Malomalo 7s tournament it will probably expose a lot of untouched and untapped seven players.”

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