New era dawns as Male goes back to the future with Fiji

Friday 15 June 2012

DON'T let anyone suggest that tomorrow's game in Lautoka is not important.

Fiji coach Inoke Male, left, has rung the changes for tomorrow's game with Scotland. Picture: James Galloway

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Stuart McAllister

For both teams and for different reasons it is vital. For Scotland, it is the chance to show that their victory in Australia was the beginning of a revival, not a flash in the pan. For Fiji, it is the chance to win back the hearts and souls of their disenchanted supporters.

If the Scots players and coaches thought that they had it hard after the World Cup, they should have seen what was going on in Fiji. There, the heart-searching was not just that they had a disaster of a tournament, finishing fourth in their pool behind South Africa, Wales and Samoa so that they have to qualify for the next tournament, but they did it playing alien rugby.So the blood-letting began, Inoke Male, the new coach, has named a side for tomorrow's game with only three players involved in their final humiliation in New Zealand, a 66-0 hammering by Wales, which means that out go the familiar names, in come a bunch of youngsters and sevens players.Male had a chance to test two variations on the core team playing two matches in the Pacific Nations Cup, where they beat Japan and lost narrowly to Samoa with a side that was closer to their second string than their first."We are into a new era," Male said. "We have changed all these players because it is our game-plan. It is important to win this game, we have changed a lot since the World Cup. We are trying to end our European dependence; we are going back to the old Fijian open rugby."All of which, Ross Ford, the Scotland captain, says, only makes Fiji more dangerous. They have been analysing the home side pretty much from the time they left Newcastle, where they had played that memorable game against Australia, and are impressed."When you look at some of the clips of the Pacific Cup they have been playing in and some of the tries they have scored, they have been outstanding," says Ford. "They have been brilliant and they have some really talented players in the squad. They offload when you really wouldn't think it was on, so you have to be very wary of that. They are a very dangerous side if they are given the ball and the space to use it."The challenge for Scotland is to give Fiji neither the space nor the possession to get their brilliant runners into the game – a structured approach, Ford says. "We have got to make it uncomfortable for them to play, force them to play from deep, make them do all the work," is how he puts it."We are playing a structured game and have to keep hold of the ball as much as we can. That is the best way for us to approach the game, keep the ball and keep the scoreboard ticking over, force them to play from deep, back our defence, and just not give them a chance."There are two great unknowns about the game. The first is how the inexperienced Fijians will react to the rare opportunity to face a Tier One nation at home. As a country, they are used to facing their neighbours, Tonga and Samoa, but a full Test against the side that has just defeated Australia is whetting the appetite.Whether winning or losing is a better strategy in their long-term hope of getting more incoming tours like this is a debatable point. In the 1970s and 1980s, major countries came regularly if not frequently – Andy Robinson, the Scotland head coach, won his second England cap when they played in Suva, Fiji's capital – but the closer Fiji got to winning, the rarer the visits became and Scotland's defeat 14 years ago seems to have put an end to them.Not that such considerations are worrying the team who are cheerfully talking about the boost their game will get "when" not "if" they beat Scotland.The other unknown is the weather. After 36 hours of torrential downpour with about 30cm of rain landing on the island, nobody is taking anything for granted. The weather forecast is that it should revert to being hot and dry, standard for Fiji at this time of year, but after experiencing that level of elemental fury in the middle of what is supposed to be the dry season, the teams have to be prepared for anything.Ford certainly sounds as though he is: "Whatever the weather is, we will deal with it. We can't worry about things we have no control over," he says. "We have various game-plans and will adjust."

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New era dawns as Male goes back to the future with Fiji

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