Fiji have taken a giant step towards the knockout stages of the 2025 International Defence Rugby Competition after a comeback win over the reigning champions from France.<\/p>\n
A bunch of ill-discipline issues and a strong French team led to the champions leading 18-7 at half-time.<\/p>\n
However, Fiji roared back into the game and won 29-23 despite\u00a0Vive Sikisawana’s red card.<\/p>\n
The first 35 minutes were France’s best of the tournament as a focused physical tactic paid dividends. Two penalties from their captain, Melissa Bergeron, gave them the perfect start before\u00a0Fanny Camus delivered a converted try.<\/p>\n
Fiji hit back through\u00a0Susana Railumu’s converted try but, immediately, the French took advantage of a fortunate bounce to extend their lead through\u00a0Julie Del Corral.<\/p>\n
The second half saw a different Fiji performance, and they were back in the game within minutes.\u00a0Priscilla Siata and\u00a0Sikisawana both dived over the line to reduce the French advantage to just one point.<\/p>\n
That’s when\u00a0Sikisawana was dismissed for consistent high tackles, but Fiji would not let this slip.\u00a0Elenoa Naimata scored the key try, and Fiji will qualify for the knockout stages if Australia or France fail to win any of their remaining pool games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fiji have taken a giant step towards the knockout stages of the 2025 International Defence Rugby Competition after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-364906","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115073058388860929","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}