Fiji Pearls head coach Unaisi Rokoura highlighted how crucial every game is for the team and how they will continue to build and utilise their pool of players come world cup next year.
With the Netball World Cup drawing closer, Coach Rokoura understands that every game will be crucial for the Pearls as the players will need as much game-time and exposure as possible leading up to the Netball World Cup.
The Fiji Pearls opened their Nations Cup campaign (their last campaign of the year) going down to a clinical Botswana team.
Coach Rokoura reiterated that their opener was disappointing as they lost to a lower rank team and they’ve pointed out areas which they lacked in and honed up on these areas.
“The first game against Botswana was a disappointing result, we came in here knowing and understanding that we’re playing against lower rank teams, as a team we have a goal in place, but unfortunately that wasn’t the result in our first match against Botswana, we had to regroup and review our game,” said Rokoura.
“On the week of our travel we had to make a few of the changes due to some indiscipline and as a result we have a very young defence unit. But at the end of the day these players have proven themselves,” added Rokoura.
Coach Rokoura emphasised on the importance of levelling up their performance, mending weakness, coming back stronger and finishing off on top.
“We’re not taking any of our games lightly, our main aim coming to the Nations Cup is to finish in the top two and we have the opportunity again to play against Botswana in the Final on Saturday,” said Rokoura.
The team got the win against Singapore, Ireland and Malaysia and will play against Singapore A tonight at 9pm, Fiji Pearls will meet Botswana again in the Final of the Nations Cup 2022 tomorrow Saturday, 10th December.
“We’ve regrouped, identified the weak areas that didn’t work for us, had training sessions to work on these areas so that we can improve in our next game,” added Rokoura.
As Fiji Pearls come to the end of their 2022 campaign, the main objective is to build up for the world cup next year by using every opportunity and every competition that is available to assess all the pool of players that are available for selection.
