The Swire Shipping Fijian Drua players are constantly reminded that they repre­sent the thousands of young boys and girls that run on sandy beach­es, in the interior and those in the islands.

That was message from Drua’s head of athletic performance Naca Cawanibuka.

“There are lots of learnings as we sail through this ocean of discov­ery,” he said during a video inter­view.

“We acknowledge all the players that have gone before us, those that are playing now and those are to come.”

He said the Drua players are play­ing for their vakabauta (faith), va­nua (country) and vuvale (family).

After their 40-10 loss to the Wara­tahs, Cawanibuka said, they’ve now experienced what it’s like in Super Rugby.

In an interview with Radio New Zealand, he said, faith is a major pillar in Fijian culture and it was no different in the sporting arena.

“Our faith is strongly intertwined within our culture and within the rugby performance as well, and that has been realised by a lot of expat coaches who come in.

“They have found that this is the one thing that grounds our play­ers and they have found it to be the common denominator,” he said.

“For us in our Fijian culture, and I guess for our Tokos from Tonga and our Usos from Samoa, it’s this faith.

“It’s something that has been passed down by our forefathers and it’s something that has made us different but there is a lot of performance benefits and psychol­ogy behind it.

“It’s probably the most untapped performance determinant for us in Fiji that we’ve started to unearth in the last seven to eight years.

“This is because what we’ve done is we’ve linked the faith together with our core values and principles with normal daily performance and behaviours around nutrition, skill, conditioning, mindset and just general behaviour and mak­ing them better people.

“Those concepts are universal but I guess the thing that we’ve been disconnected with in the past is the way it relates to the bible, which the boys read everyday any­way.”

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