Fiji 7s

Well, yesterday was a pretty disappointing day for me. The reason is, Fiji didn't get to win the Hong Kong 7s, despite overcoming some tough hurdles to reach there. We beat an inspired Scotland team after brushing them off in the pool games (played them again in the quarters as it was a six-pool tournament), then defeated our arch-nemesis, New Zealand, pretty nicely. But it looks like our main competition won't be NZ, or even England. It will be Samoa. These guys almost demolished us in the finals, scoring 27 points to Fiji's 0 in the first half. While Fiji came back bravely in the 2nd half to make 22 points, it wasn't enough in the final seconds as we lost the ball and Samoa ended the play to make it 27-22.

The thing I noticed was, at the kickoff they targetted the ball toward the middle of the field, toward the shorter Fijian guys, instead of at Naevo, who definitely would have got the ball for Fiji. They've defeated us twice now in the IRB 2006/2007 7s circuit, and we've beaten them once. With them just behind us by six points (along with NZ), the competition is sure to become tougher and the pressure will rise to keep the lead up.

One thing is for sure, Serevi still has some of his old magic left. He side-stepped a number of NZ players to score the final nail in the coffin for NZ, and made it 21-12.

All the best for Adelaide boys. If you meet up with Samoa, make sure you thrash them!