In the men’s game, after the first quarter, Fiji were always trailing their opponents and could not make up the deficit.  The sheer aggressiveness of the Tahitian defence was their key to domination and is exactly what we want Fiji teams to be able to play in the future.   The final score was 74 Tahiti and 44 Fiji. 

 

The Tahitians capitalized on every opportunity of a turnover created by their defence and ran the floor with ease to make many lay-ups on their fast break.  In addition their half court offence was well executed and quick and resulted in many easy outside shots.

 

To their credit the Fiji team did not give up at ant time and battled to the end.  Manoa Puamau had fouled out before half time and this left the inside work to Martin Liebregts and he smaller forwards.  Our guards had real difficulty in handling the offence against the Tahiti defence and so Fiji was not always able to execute their offence as planned. 

 

In the women’s game the Australian were much taller, far more skilled and much faster than our Fiji team.  Their understanding of the game was superior and they did not relent in their pressure in defence and offence throughout the whole game.  While this is the way they have been taught to play, it was a bit unsportsmanlike to create the pressure at all times in their half court defence, and to run the fast break on every single turnover.  With the final score at 108 to 8 the game was obviously one sided however our girls did not give up.

 

Again our girls tried to the end but had real trouble in scoring at any time.  But there were some good parts to the game.  For all but 3 of our players, the balance had never played in a full game as this and the younger and less experienced players really did show some fight and determination.  In addition they gained a little confidence as the game went on and in the last quarter tried much harder on defence and at times caused gthe Aussie team a few problems.

 

With Coach Moce in hospital it was left t our HOD Stuart to steer the team and at the end of the game he asked  the girls to not hang their heads as they had done a good job against a very strong team and this was a lesson that they would keep for a long time and if they learned from it that would be good for the future of basketball in Fiji.