“In Fiji, it’s not excitement, it’s madness,” explained Seremaia Bai, one of the assistant coaches of the “Flying Fijians” qualified for the quarter-finals with a reunion on Sunday against England in Marseille.
“Like in England, we are crazy about rugby in Fiji,” insisted the former three-quarter center of Clermont, Castres or the English club Leicester, during a press conference in Marseille: “It’s a small island Fiji, people get up at 3 a.m., 5 a.m. (to watch the matches), and even the sick come back to life when we win.
On Sunday, “we are not just going to play a quarter-final, we are going to play for our people, for the young people, for the people in the villages, it means a lot for them. It’s been 16 years since we reached the quarter-finals,” he recalled: “Here we have a new opportunity available to us, we want to make the most of it.”
And in the event of victory, “it will be madness”, he assured: “Rugby is very important in Fiji, it gives us life, it makes everyone happy, it unites the country. Whatever the result, I hope the country will be proud of us.”
“In any case, we are the only team from tier 2 (level 2) to have reached the quarter-finals, that is already something we should be proud of,” insisted the Fijians assistant coach: “As a As a tier 2 nation, we don’t often have the opportunity to face tier 1 teams like England. So for us it’s an opportunity to go even further.”
A certainty for Seramaïa Baï: the XV de la Rose that they will face on Sunday at 5:00 p.m. on the pitch of the Vélodrome stadium “will be very different” from the one that the Fijians beat for the first time in their history during their last preparation match at this World Cup, June 26, at Twickenham: “We expect it to be different. Remember the 2007 World Cup, no one was betting on England, and they made it to the final.”
