The Swire Shipping Fijian Drua Men’s squad is the youngest, even in their third year of the Shop N Save Super Rugby Pacific, with the average age being about 24.8 years.
During fijivillage Straight Talk with Vijay Narayan, Drua CEO Mark Evans says there is a cluster of players between the ages of 23 to 27 years old and there are some other groups of younger ones in the main squad in the likes of Isaiah Armstrong-Ravula, Mesake Vocevoce, Waqa Nalaga and Isikeli Rabitu.
He says he has never seen any age profile like that in a professional rugby squad which is extraordinarily unusual.
Evans further says not only a lot of these players are young in terms of training age, but they are actually quite young in terms of just pure age.
He says if we look at successful teams in all sports, it is extremely unusual that they have do have a balanced age profile.
When asked about the team’s mental toughness when it comes to certain decision-making in some of the toughest games, and what type of work is needed in these situations, Evans says a lot of it needs patience and also a lot of it needs learning from experience.
He says it is almost impossible to replicate the pressure of an actual game for example when they played against the Blues in round 1 of the Shop N Save Super Rugby Pacific this year where they had a good start before the Blues had a good 20 minutes afterwards denying the Drua possession.
Evans says they learned from that and in the following week, they were in the same situation again when they played Moana Pasifika and they nearly did it again but they were better than the previous week.
He says some of it is purely learning from experience and using it to learn and grow.
He adds the other bit of it is scenario planning where they try and set scenarios for the team to solve problems of some of the situations which also takes quite a lot of time.
Evans says the longer these players play the game at a very high level, the easier it becomes and it is true that because of the age profile, they still have a lot of growth in that area and everyone in the organisation recognises that.
The Fijian Drua Men will take on the Waratahs at 1.05pm this Saturday in Lautoka while the Drua Women will take on the Waratahs at 3.35pm.
In other matches this weekend, the Hurricanes will host the Rebels at 6.05pm Friday, the Brumbies will take on Moana Pasifika at 8.35pm Friday, the Blues will play the Crusaders at 6.05pm Saturday and Western Force will take on the Reds at 8.35pm
