How the Flying Fijians became 'an 80-minute team'

The Flying Fijians David Silvester has revealed the extensive back ground work that has underpinned the squad’s outstanding showing at the Rugby World Cup where they remain on course to reach the quarter-finals.

Silvester, who previously worked with England, is the head of athletics performance and told the Fiji Times the management team trawled through extensive footage before setting out the plan that took in the Pacific Nations Cup where they remained unbeaten and the famous win 30-22 over England before heading to the World Cup in France where they narrowly lost 32-26 to Wales but defeated Australia 22-15.

The aim was to ensure the players could deliver their brand of rugby for 80 minutes and he said: “So we looked at a lot of games of all different areas – the Six Nations teams, Super Rugby teams, the Rugby Championship – and we looked at some of the real key areas that we knew we could affect.

“So how long is the ball in play for? What are the work-to-rest ratios? How long is the phase before? What’s the average of one of those? What are the longest ones that we would be expected to play?

“From these, we worked out our training and our different conditioning work. And therefore we knew that if we could build a plan on that progressively and get to the World Cup having achieved those goals and aims, we knew we could become an 80-minute team.

“Their ability to soak up the work that we give the boys and their ability then to keep pushing even when there are times when some of the guys have probably struggled, they won’t give up and they’ll constantly keep pushing and pushing.

“We’ve seen the improvements that have stemmed from that, people have put that 100 per cent into everything we’ve asked them to do and they’ve improved. We’ve improved greatly over the whole of the nine weeks that we’ve been working together.

“We’re all in this together, and we all want to be the best we possibly can, to constantly keep improving,” he said.

“We know that if each person’s trying their very best to improve then it will improve the group as a whole. Everybody buying into has helped push us along and take us to where we are at the moment. So it’s really fantastic and good.”