Talofa, Ma’lele’i, Bula and welcome to Season 05 Episode 50 of Breakfast Bites, the FIJI & PACIFIC SPORTS NEWS PODCAST, by TeivovoSports.com – a wrap of Pasifika people’s sports news on this bright and sunny Tuesday morning 23 May 2023.
Coming to you with tons of hanisi from the 180th meridian, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Talofa, Ma’lele’i, Bula and welcome to Season 05 Episode 50 of Breakfast Bites, the FIJI & PACIFIC SPORTS NEWS PODCAST, by TeivovoSports.com – a wrap of Pasifika people’s sports news on this bright and sunny Tuesday morning 23 May 2023.
Coming to you with tons of hanisi from the 180th meridian, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
In rugby
Many Fiji fans are critical of Ben Gollings and his Fiji team not winning any tournament in the just completed HSBC 7s Series 2023.
In fact, some fans are pretty hot under the collar, outright rude and disrespectful.
More on rugby 7s in “Background Buzz” at the end of this podcast.
In rugby league
Last week, the French government announced that it has rescinded its decision to host the 2025 Rugby League World Cup, citing financial reasons.
New Zealand and Australia have expressed an interest to co-host the event. Is this an opportunity to also host games in Oceania to spread the gospel?
Meanwhile, Queensland Head Coach, Billy Slater has been accused of disloyalty after his controversial call to axe Maroons stars Dane Gagai and Kalyn Ponga for ORIGIN I on Wednesday week.
While south of the border, Brad Fittler has hired Tongan muscle to stand up to the Queensland bullies, with enforcers, Tyson Frizell, playing his first game for the Blues since 2020 and Tevita Pangai-Junior making his ORIGIN debut in the starting side.
Freddie has also handed Nicho Hynes an ORIGIN debut off the bench, with Jarome Luai to start in the No.6 jersey alongside Panthers teammate Nathan Cleary.
And the Foxx is back in Blue.
In football
Real Madrid star, Vinicius Junior pointed to a fan behind the Valencia goal midway through the second half, with Madrid defender Lucas Vazquez confirming the supporter made monkey gestures at the Brazilian. Very sad.
Meanwhile, Manchester City, seven points clear of Arsenal with two games left, can cement their status as one of English football’s greatest ever teams if they can add the FA Cup and the Champions League to their latest Premier League title.
Pep Guardiola’s treble chasers face Manchester United in the FA Cup final at Wembley on 03 June, then take on Inter Milan in Istanbul seven days later as they chase a Champions League victory for the first time..
In the NBA
The Celtics are gone!
Miami Heat became the first-ever eighth seed to win an NBA playoff game by 25 points or more in a brutal 128-102 win over the second-seeded Boston Celtics in Game 3 of their Eastern Conference Finals.
Miami now holds a 3-0 stranglehold on the NBA Eastern Conference finals, and are vying to become just the second eighth-seeded team, after the 1999 New York Knicks, to reach the NBA Finals.
The Heat host game four later today, just one win away from reaching the NBA Finals.
In boxing
What did you expect – Promoter’s dream, Tyson Fury stole the show at a media conference in Melbourne yesterday for the Parker-Django fight.
The Gypsy King said that he would need less than seven rounds in total to “annihilate” both Francis Ngannou and Oleksandr Usyk – while also revealing he wants to fight in Australia.
So who’s fighting tomorrow again?
In SportsBiz
Brooks Koepka’s two-shot win at the PGA Championship vaulted the 33-year-old into golf history and fueled LIV Golf’s ongoing battle with the PGA Tour.
The win gave Koepka his fifth major championship, the same number as legends Seve Ballesteros and Byron Nelson.
Although the PGA Championship this year boosted its overall purse to US$17.5Million, their US$3.15M paycheck for the winner is less than the US$4M Koepka took home from his most recent LIV tournament victory last month in Orlando.
The biggest takeaway from Koepka’s triumph is that competing on LIV instead of the PGA Tour does not automatically take a player out of major form.
But the larger question is, whether LIV can parlay Koepka’s wins into more fans interest in the LIV tournaments.
Background Buzz
Okay sports fans, on “Background Buzz” today I take a closer look at the Fiji Men’s 7s Team, where many Fiji fans are critical of Ben Gollings and his Fiji team for not winning any tournament in the HSBC 7s Series 2023. Some fans are outright rude and disrespectful.
So when you look at the HSBC World Rugby 7s Series 2023, two players stand out – champion Samoan flyer, Va’a Apelu Maliko, who scored an incredible 50 tries across the 2023 Series for 252 points, along with 41 line breaks, 122 tackles, 55 offloads and 214 carries.
In doing so, Maliko grabbed the DHL Impact Player and also the Top Try Scorer Awards for 2023.
The other standout was All Blacks 7s Fijian playmaker, Akuila Rokolisoa who won the Hot Stepper Award voted by fans on social media, and along with the Samoan, was named in the HSBC Dream Team 2023 along with three Argentinians, All Blacks 7s player Leo Carter and Henry Paterson of Australia.
No Fiji 7s Player in sight – so what’s gone wrong with Fiji – wrong Coach, wrong Strength and Conditioning Coach, wrong players – all the above?
The fact is, this Fiji 7s team is slowly but surely getting better.
As the players start to gel by getting their communications and combinations in sync, winning HSBC 7s tournaments will follow.
After a year of frustration and a couple of near misses, the London 7s was their best outing by far, with only an unfortunate red card to Batirerega in the second minute of the final, hampering any chance of success.
In fact, I would argue that red cards in 7s ruin the game.
World Rugby needs to take a good hard look at the impact of sending players off in rugby 7s and come up with smarter rules around red card infringements.
Just because we have red cards in XVs doesn’t mean that we have to have red cards in 7s.
There are so many XVs rules that have already been ditched or amended to make 7s rugby a better, fairer game – so why not smarten up the rules around cards?
Apart from ruining the contest, sending off a player in 7s has a disproportionately much higher negative impact on his team, than red-carding a player in a XVs game.
For example, the impact of time for Batirerega’s send off on his teammates after two minutes was that they had to play 85.7% of the game without him, while having to cover more than 833 square meters per man, more than double the area players in a XVs game have to each cover.
All up – it’s a killer and no contest.
But back to the Fiji 7s team – fans must remember that Fiji typically plays the highest risk style of 7s rugby – crazy offloads at very high tempo, so unless everything is in sync, things will generally fall apart.
And they have, but the main objective of 2023 was to qualify for the Olympics in Paris in 2024 and they did that, so a big tick there.
Ben Gollings has been re-building his squad and still has a ways to go for Paris in 2024.
Apart from double Olympic gold medalist Jerry Tuwai, Coach Ben Gollings has held on to Waisea Nacuqu from Tokyo.
Big experienced forwards – Kalione Nasoko, Josua Vakurinabili, Meli Derenalagi plus utility Semi Radradra from Tokyo are all gone – and with them a massive loss of experience.
In the backs Gollings has lost – Iosefo Masi now a star Centre for the Fijian Drua, Vilimoni Botitu, Jiuta Wainiqolo and Napolioni Bolaca.
Theoretically, Iosefo Masi, Wainiqolo and Bolaca could be selected again next year, but the elephant in the room is the aging trio of Tuwai, Nacuqu and Mocenacagi – I leave that call to Gollings as by now, he would know their character, fitness and what they can offer his 2024 squad, better than anyone else in Fiji.
My thoughts are; watching the All Blacks 7s warrior – Tim Mickleson, I still feel there is a place for Mocenacagi or Iosefo Masi.
I also feel Jerry Tuwai and Waisea Nacuqu are past their best, or definitely will be by Paris 2024.
The Fiji Rugby Union needs to fix Napolioni Bolaca’s knee injury so he has a chance of making Fiji’s Olympic team 2024. He is a game breaker and if fully fixed will strengthen the Fiji team no end, plus his selection will make it easier to select either one of
Tuwai or Nacuqu as Fiji cannot afford to carry two veterans in such key dynamic positions as halfback/sweeper or playmaker.
The rest of Fiji’s 2024 Olympic squad, led by the fantastic Joseva Talacolo and the dynamic Manueli Maisamoa are within the current crop of players like Teba, Rasaku, Tamani and Daugunu who now need to step up to the plate.
And that’s a wrap!
For TEIVOVOsports.com I’m Culden Kamea – Mahalo, vinaka and thank you. Please hit the subscribe button below if you would like to receive more Pasifika sports highlights on Breakfast Bites. And tank you all too mas for all your love and support.
Mahalo, vina’a and tank you all too mass for all your love and support.
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