{"id":722556,"date":"2026-06-08T06:53:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T06:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/722556\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T06:53:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T06:53:15","slug":"rks-u-18-rugby-skipper-confident-of-a-good-deans-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/722556\/","title":{"rendered":"RKS U-18 Rugby Skipper confident of a good Deans season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ratu Kadavulevu School Under-18 rugby captain Esira Batisoso believes his team is well-prepared for another challenging Vodafone Deans season following valuable international exposure in Japan earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p>Batisoso says the experience gained at the Sanix Tournament in Japan had significantly enhanced the team&#8217;s development.<\/p>\n<p>The Nalotawa, Yawe, Kadavu player says that competing against high-quality opposition exposed the team to a higher level of pace and intensity, helping them better understand the demands of top-level school rugby.<\/p>\n<p>Despite leading the defending champions, Batisoso acknowledged that retaining the title will be a difficult task.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/20260608171242_media_6a2644f7691ee3_68953365.jpg\" alt=\"\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:8px\"\/><\/p>\n<p>He says he has\u00a0confidence in this team, but they know defending the Deans Trophy will not be easy.<\/p>\n<p>Batisoso says they cannot afford to take any team lightly because the competition will be tough throughout the season.<\/p>\n<p>Batisoso is leading RKS in their 2026 Vodafone Deans Trophy title defence campaign after the side opened their season in a dominant 46-3 victory over Sila Central High School.<\/p>\n<p>The young captain remains optimistic they will pursue back-to-back Deans titles.<\/p>\n<p>In Eastern division games on Saturday, RKS will face Queen Victoria School in their second pool match while Lelean Memorial School will take on Saint John&#8217;s Cawaci in the other pool match. <\/p>\n<p>Sila Central College is on bye this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ratu Kadavulevu School Under-18 rugby captain Esira Batisoso believes his team is well-prepared for another challenging Vodafone Deans&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":722557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85,350091],"class_list":["post-722556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-vodafone-deans-competition-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722556","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=722556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/722557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}