Kolinisau demands stronger defence ahead of New York 7s

The Fiji Airways Fiji men’s rugby 7s players have been told to improve on their defence in this weekend’s New York 7s tournament.

Despite leading the HSBC SVN Series points table, head coach Osea Kolinisau is far from happy with their sloppy defence, which saw them finishing third in last weekend’s Vancouver 7s tournament.

Speaking to SUNsports yesterday, Kolinisau said he was disappointed with their performance in Vancouver.

“We didn’t play to our standard especially our missing a lot of tackles and most of the time not sticking to our processes,” he said.

Kolinisau said they (the players) watched all their games again where they noted the high number of missed tackles and the many scoring opportunities they wasted.

He highlighted another area of concern was their failure to win possession at the restarts.

“Especially on our kick-off receiver against Spain, we lost three balls in the kick-offs and Spain scored their three tries from those three balls.

“Also, against Argentina, when we kicked off, we had two kicks that didn’t go to the 10 and then one of the kick-offs we didn’t contest. We gave it straight to themand that was something we talked about.”

Kolinisau said after they review, they now want to play to their strength and to keep it there.

However, he reiterated that his concern is still on their defence.

“We missed a lot of tackles last week, and that’s something we’re not proud of or happy about; that’s something we want to rectify this week. Making sure that our defence is solid, especially in the middle of the field,” he said.

Kolinisau said that it was important for everyone to focus on their individual roles and to make sure each player understood why they are there and why they had been chosen.

FIXTURES

Men- Sunday, 2am Fiji v Argentina; 4.56am Fiji v Great Britain; 8.14am Fiji v Spain

Women- Sunday, 3.28am Fiji v France; 6.46am Fiji v New Zea-land; 9.20am Fiji v Great Britain.

Feedback: tevita.w@fijisun.com.fj