The blunt Baber verdict on fifth place Fiji’s conditioning levels

When thinking back on his first sevens competition with Fiji following Ben Gollings’ recent dismissal, Gareth Baber didn’t hold back on Sunday in Hong Kong. During the Tokyo Olympics, the Welshman led the Fijians to a successful gold medal defense.

Even though he spent a lot of time preparing to make that retention mission successful in 2021, he only has 16 weeks left to lead Fiji to victory in Paris at the end of July by pulling strings in support of new head coach Osea Kolinisau.

That’s a big request. In their final game this weekend in the Far East, the Islanders may have looked strong when they defeated South Africa 33–14, but it was only a play-off for fifth place.

When Baber talked to RugbyPass in the stadium tunnel—which was festooned with images of golden Fijian teams celebrating past Hong Kong title victories—he was not blind to the reality.

When asked to describe his first competition back with a Fijian team that had struggled under Gollings this season, he answered, “Frustrating.” The team had finished third in Cape Town, fourth in Dubai and Perth, and sixth in Vancouver and Los Angeles.
With one leg left in Singapore before the season-ending final in Madrid, their combined performance is good enough to place them third on the HSBC SVNS table. However, Fiji’s focus is on winning titles, not wrapping up their schedule of matches in places like Hong Kong at 3:15 pm, almost four hours before the cup final between New Zealand and France took place.

It’s great to be participating again, but I would prefer to be where you are when you head out to play another game tonight at six o’clock. We must put in more effort because we are not there.Our main goal is to improve our performance in the next two competitions, but we’re also preparing in Fiji to be ready for the Olympics and win more gold.

“We acknowledge there is work to be done in terms of our conditioning levels and obviously stopping the opposition from having the best of their pressure in the game and we have to do that through what we bring to it so yeah, we have some stuff to work on. That’s what the country demands, that’s what the expectations are on these players.

“We acknowledge that there is still more work to be done to secure a spot in the top four and advance to the finals, where we are accustomed, particularly in Hong Kong. It was a good finish against South Africa, but we still have some work ahead of us.” While winning the championship game and securing those positions is fantastic, our ultimate objective is to go to the play-offs.

Fiji’s performance in the second half of their quarterfinal matchup against eventual winners New Zealand on Saturday night was what ended their dreams of winning the Hong Kong title for the first time since 2019.
They had overcome an early deficit to lead 12-7 at halftime, but the strain finally got to them in the second half, as the Kiwis crushed Fijian hearts with two late tries, the second in the final minute of the 12-19 loss.

“We are aware of how narrow the margins are. In sevens, it’s not a secret,” Baber thought to himself. “You have only got six and a half minutes to make the most of the ball’s time on the field. In my opinion, we dominated the game for the most part of the quarterfinal.

But in just a minute or a minute and a half, it can break you, and that’s precisely what people in New Zealand are like. They made threats, and in the end, they were right to win. To be in positions to be able to finish off games, we need to put in more effort.

They became lodged there. In the latter half, they committed less mistakes than we did. They made more mistakes in the first half of the game, but they just understood how they were going to win.

Fiji will work on improving that understanding over the next weeks in order to be better equipped to perform in Singapore from May 3–5.

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