Fijian-born All Blacks 7s legend Tomasi Cama Jnr has been appointed as the new All Blacks sevens head coach for the 2024 season after being the Assistant coach of the team for six seasons.
Cama will take charge of the team through to the Paris Olympics next July.
With former head coach Clarke Laidlaw’s recent departure to lead the Hurricanes for the 2024 Shop N Save Super Rugby Pacific season, New Zealand Rugby Head of Men’s High Performance Mike Anthony says it is critical to provide the squad continuity as they prepare for Paris.
Anthony says Cama is a master of the game of sevens, an integral part of the DNA of the team, and has given his significant experience as both a player and a coach.
He says Cama has mana within the playing squad and along with the management team has driven a strong performance culture and achieved success.
Cama has been a part of the All Blacks Sevens as a player and coach for 18 years and says these are big shoes to fill given what the former coaches have achieved with this team and he had to think quite hard about how he could make an impact in the role.
Following in the sevens footsteps of his father, also Tomasi Cama, who played internationally for Fiji, Cama went to New Zealand to pursue a career in rugby in 1999 and said he is grateful to have worked with some great coaches since then.
Cama is one of five New Zealand men to have won World Rugby’s Sevens Player of the year, in 2012 – the same year he won the Richard Crawshaw Memorial for New Zealand Sevens Player of the Year.
He has won Commonwealth Games gold and the Rugby World Cup Sevens as both a player and coach, taking part in a total of 128 international tournaments. Cama is the all-time leading points scorer for the All Blacks Sevens and has scored the second most points in the history of the Sevens World Series.
Source: allblacks.com
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