Manu Samoa Sevens coach, Fuimaono Titimaea Tafua, is confident ahead of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland.
Fuimaono in fact believes the team that’s getting ready to leave the country is much better than the one that performed poorly during the last IRB Sevens Series.
“We want a medal,” Fuimaono said. “As you know we’ve never been there before but we will try our best.”
“At the moment our sevens has been down so we are trying our best to pick up the standard - not only the fitness level but also the strength.”
“They are far, far better than the result of the last IRB circuit”.
Samoa dropped from 4th to 8th position on the IRB ranking after the last Series. The coaching staff has since been changed and Fuimaono has been brought in especially for the Glasgow assignment.
The hard task master is a former Manu Samoa fifteens coach. He was a selector during the past sevens campaign.
Fuimaono has included veterans Lio Lolo and Lolo Lui in an extended 14-man squad.
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Cama misses out. When Junior Tomasi Cama misses the plane with the New Zealand Sevens team to some exotic overseas tournament this year, it has always been because of injury.
It has happened again, the 2012 world sevens player of the year and New Zealand playmaker won’t be chasing a second Commonwealth Games gold medal after being part of the winning team at the 2010 Delhi Games.
Four tears to a calf muscle has seen to that. And to top it off, just when Gordon Tietjens named his team for the Glasgow Games, Cama was laid up at home sick and on antibiotics.
“It has been a bit of a bummer,” said the 33-year-old. “I was disappointed.”
“He [Tietjens] said it would have been a different story if I had been playing in this year’s series.”
“He also said the boys who have played have been playing well.”
Cama couldn’t attend the selection camp at Mt Maunganui for which he had been named.
There remains hope. Tietjens wants to take two extra players as cover on Monday to their camp in Amsterdam, Cama would love to be one of them and Tietjens said Cama will probably go there as a back-up player.
Counting against him is that he has played little rugby this year. At the Wellington Sevens in February he played only one game. He was called up for the London tournament and had only one game there too.
It all goes back to Christmas when he was training to play with the Manawatu sevens team which he was coaching and guided to the national final at Rotorua. He felt the calf muscle tighten and a scan revealed the damage.
“I’m still keen to get back to full fitness; I think maybe this season if I can just get over this bug and see what’s next.”
When he has tried to attain full fitness and has gone hard, the calf has flared up again and he has had to take the next day off.
While the calf has been healing and he has been training for the past month, that is no substitute for games. There hasn’t been any sevens to play.
He said it is tough at international level to come straight back into it.
“I know what level I have to be at, not for one game, but for the whole tournament.”
Tietjens rates him the best halfback in world sevens and Cama still has the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics as one of his ambitions.
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