Fijiana coach identifies areas to work on
Fijiana XV captain Kolora Lomani said they had struggled to maintain the standard they had prepared for during the week.
Monday 10 August 2026 | 10:30
The Vodafone Fijiana XV’s 55-12 thrashing to South Africa has provided their newly appointed head coach Willie Walker, the opportunity to gauge where the team really stands.
“It was a pretty tough introduction, obviously, for myself in terms of Test match rugby,” Walker said after the first Test at Suva’s National Stadium last Saturday.
“They put up a great fight. South Africa was always going to be a tough task for us, but what it did was give us a gauge of where we were currently. Also, the areas we need to be better at for next week (second Test).
“We’ll go away this weekend and work hard to make sure we rectified some of the areas we have identified.”
Fijiana XV captain Kolora Lomani said they had struggled to maintain the standard they had prepared for during the week.
“It was tough out there. I guess we kind of pulled back from what we prepared for during the week,” she said.
“South Africa did give it to us and we expected the collisions in the first 20 minutes of the game. But now we’ve just got to go back, re-watch our clips and see what we could do better leading into the next game.”
Lomani admitted that their defence had let them down.
“They came up strong upfront and we slipped off a few tackles. We have no excuse for that. We just have to go back, fix a few things and come back stronger next week.”
Walker also highlighted discipline was an issue after Fijiana No.8 Alfreda Fisher was red carded for a dangerous tackle in the second half.
“We’ll have a look at the video. We can’t allow discipline to dictate the way we play, and we’ll review what that looked like and how we moved forward,” he said.
Walker said the Fijiana’s high number of penalties and turnovers had prevented them from competing effectively against a quality South African side.
“We had seven or eight penalties against a quality side like South Africa. If we could learn some lessons this week and make sure we improved for next week, it would go a long way.
“From my end as a coach, I think we needed to get back to some basics, some fundamentals of rugby.
"We couldn’t play a Test match with 17 turnovers. We were just giving the ball away to the opposition, and to compete at Test match level, we had to be able to control our own ball and make the best of those opportunities.”
