Surrey Stars players raise aloft the Jayden Memorial Cup, the team beat Rewa 3-0 in the final at the Bear Creek Park in Surrey
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Fiji Sports
SEVENS exponent Waisale Serevi was asked about the key to his success, and he responded that discipline is number one on the list.
Rightly so.
In a Sportsone exclusive during last year’s Vancouver Sevens, Serevi highlighted discipline as an essential foundation for any sport and rugby was no different.
“It builds an athlete's character to help them set their mind to achieve great things”.
On the contrary, the Fiji 7s players need to learn to make self-discipline before seeing a dramatic improvement in their success.
And based on the great one’s notion, self-discipline is the ability to do what you know you should do, whether you feel like it or not and it is also the discipline to stop yourself from doing things you want to do – but shouldn’t.
With just the indiscipline element, coach Gareth Baber’s team failed miserably at the Dubai and Cape Town Sevens.
He is not happy with the way the team performed and he didn’t sugar coat upon arriving in Fiji.
Baber said, ‘It's end of the world if the Fijian 7s side don't fix their discipline in the remaining eight tournaments of the World Rugby Sevens Series'.
It is also a fair argument, that Baber has many times stressed the importance of maintaining discipline and its consequence.
What it seems though, is that the message is somehow not getting across to the players.
And if it had, we need to ask why they are committing the same mistakes repeatedly.
Serevi said it well, that playing the sport doesn’t necessarily make an individual the game’s proficient student.
He said, you may know the game but ask, ‘do you know the rules of the game’.
The rules, he said was very important.
It could well be the lack of the knowledge of the laws that leaves the players second guessing their play in the hopes they get away with contraventions.
But, then again, the referees, who are the all-seeing gods of the game haven’t made lives any easier on our players, they seem to carry our numbers at will.
The outcry is that Fijian players are easily picked on for minor infractions against those committed by bigger nations of the game.
Before I call it a double standard, let’s heed to Serevi’s advise that is we need our players to understand the laws of game better.
And besides, Serevi there have also been suggestions by the know how’s and the public for the players to understand the game, and the best person to educate them is a qualified referee.
One who can run the rules of the game during scrummages and pickup games.
It may well do it ahead of the Hamilton Sevens.