{"id":315926,"date":"2025-11-29T06:43:24","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T06:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/315926\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T06:43:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T06:43:24","slug":"fiji-rugby-prepares-to-level-up-with-nations-championship-inclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/315926\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiji Rugby prepares to level up with Nations Championship inclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fiji<\/a> may have sacrificed significant home-ground advantage but inclusion in next year\u2019s Nations Championship will be \u201ctransformational\u201d for the Pacific island rugby nation.<\/p>\n

The Flying Fijians were one of 12 countries invited to take part in the new biennial tournament, held across both hemispheres.<\/p>\n

They will join Japan, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa<\/a> and Argentina<\/a> from the south, while the northern teams are Six Nations<\/a> sides, England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland<\/a> and Wales.<\/p>\n

Fiji are the only country who won\u2019t play at home with the country\u2019s major rugby stadium in Suva not meeting competition requirements.<\/p>\n

Instead, their \u201chome\u201d games against Wales, England<\/a> and Scotland are set to be played in the UK.<\/p>\n

The Fijians hosted \u2013 and defeated \u2013 Scotland in a Test match in July, with the visitors struggling in the tropical heat in front of a raucous full house of around 12,000.<\/p>\n

But demands from the Nations Championship require a 25,000-seat stadium with almost half of that under cover, while the viability of hosting, including ticket sales and corporate support, was factored in.<\/p>\n

Fiji Rugby chairman John Sanday<\/a> told AAP that while playing at home would have been ideal, they were willing to cede to competition requirements, with the games bringing in a substantial windfall.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhilst we were disappointed that we would not be able to host the game here, the economic benefits that would accrue from our home games being hosted in the UK and elsewhere just outweighed every emotion that accompanied the need or the thought to have it hosted here,\u201d Sanday said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would just never be able to have the economic windfall that we would have had we hosted it here.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually a transformational opportunity for us \u2013 never before in our history have we been able to have this kind of revenue\u2026 which we can then invest back into our facilities and high performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just happy that we\u2019re part of the Nations Championship because it\u2019s a good runway in for our preparations for the Rugby World Cup<\/a> in Australia<\/a> 2027, but also it offers us a huge opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

With many of their stars based in the UK and France, Sanday said northern hemisphere matches would limit the travel time for those players as opposed to preparing and playing in Fiji.<\/p>\n

Sanday said the money would be used to improve training facilities at HFC Bank Stadium, where their Super Rugby Pacific<\/a> side Fijian Drua<\/a> also train and play.<\/p>\n

The long-term plan is that the ground will be redeveloped to regularly host Test matches by 2030.<\/p>\n

Before that the world No.8-ranked hoped to play home and away against the Wallabies and Japan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re negotiating with Japan<\/a> Rugby and we\u2019re negotiating annual Test matches with Rugby Australia,\u201d the former Fiji forward said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s something that would be after the World Cup, but in saying that there\u2019s an arrangement now in place where we have an annual away-and-home game with the Wallaroos.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we want to then sort of see if we can replicate the same for the men\u2019s and that\u2019s a conversation that is ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fiji may have sacrificed significant home-ground advantage but inclusion in next year\u2019s Nations Championship will be \u201ctransformational\u201d for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-315926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}