The Fiji Water Flying Fijians is not carried away by previous wins mindset ahead of their opening match against Wales at the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France tomorrow morning.
Head coach Raiwalui said the team haven’t really spoken about history when Fiji defeated Wales 38-34 in Nantes in 2007.
Since then, Fiji has yet to register a win against Wales despite playing them on six occasions in Cardiff and Oita respectively.
“No not really, it’s obviously quite a while ago and this team is about doing what is the next challenge, how do we improve each week.”
“Every day they’ve been pushing themselves, and we’ve been pushing them to the limit as well.”
“We want to create something for us, for them, for our people to be proud of and we’ve done a lot of that and we understand the challenges of this week and we’re looking forward to it.”
Fiji overcame England 30-22 in their final warm-up match two weeks ago in Twickenham and Raiwalui is confident Wales will pose somewhat similar challenges to the British men.
“They will obviously look to attack us tactically with their kicking game, their kick and chase, they’ll look to put pressure on the set-piece and those sorts of areas, a similar sort of game to England.”
“But like all teams they’ll be keeping a few things under their belt specifically for their opening game and we understand there’ll be some other challenges.”
“I think they will look to attack us in the areas they think we’re susceptible to, and obviously we’ll look to impose our game as well.”
Fiji will open its Rugby World Cup campaign against Wales at 7am in Boudreaux.
