Fijian Drua helping develop players to international level - Byrne

Fiji Water Flying Fijians coach Mick Byrne believes that the Swire Shipping Fijian Drua is helping develop players to the international level.

Byrne says it is great to have the Drua players who are training professionally, week in and week out coming in to join the Northern Hemisphere-based players and doing it hard and becoming hard and rugby players.

He says some of those players have only had two years of professional rugby, so they will get better moving forward, and when they come together as a national team in the future, there will be depth present in the team.

He adds that having a professional team like the Drua operating down in the southern hemisphere and bringing its players to play with the Northern hemisphere-based players, is a really good thing for the future of Fiji Rugby.

The Flying Fijians kick started their Autumn Nations Series tour against Scotland with the Drua players making up the match day 23 squad due to the match being outside of the reg 9 which prevented the northern hemisphere-based players from playing in that match.

They currently sit in 9th place on the World Rugby rankings after their Autumn Nations Series campaign.