26 Mar 2015

Sport: SRU backs Manu 7s to bounce back in HK

12:41 pm on 26 March 2015

The Samoa Rugby Union remains confident the national sevens team can turn around a run of bad form and fight for direct qualification to next year's Olympics.

The Manu Sevens are tenth in the World Series standings going into this weekend's event in Hong Kong, with only the top four earning automatic entry to the Rio Games.

Captains of the 16 sides competing in the Sevens World Series event in Hong Kong.

Captains of the 16 sides competing in the Sevens World Series event in Hong Kong. Photo: World Rugby / Martin Seras Lima

The interim CEO of the Samoa Rugby Union, Faleomavaega Vincent Fepulea'i, acknowledges results have not been acceptable but insists the team can challenge for silverware.

"The last couple of legs, in all fairness to the coach and manager, we haven't had our top team - a couple of our key players have been injured. In saying that, we have worked really hard to increase our pool of players in our training squad and we believe that we can only go up. I don't think we will get any worse than where we are at the moment and we are quietly confident that you will see a much better improvement in the next two legs of the series".

Samoa face Pacific rivals Fiji in their opening match on Friday before rounding out pool play against Canada and Belgium on Saturday.

Samoa Sevens Fans

Samoa Sevens Fans Photo: PHOTOSPORT

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