{"id":385780,"date":"2025-08-30T21:05:29","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T21:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/385780\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T21:05:29","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T21:05:29","slug":"wales-should-fear-the-fijiana-insists-ioan-cunningham-despite-loss-to-scotland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/385780\/","title":{"rendered":"Wales should fear the Fijiana, insists Ioan Cunningham despite loss to Scotland"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Milly McEvoy at Salford Community Stadium<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fiji boss Ioan Cunningham believes his former side Wales should fear the Fijiana after they battled to a 29-15 loss to Scotland in the Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup.<\/p>\n

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Loraini Senivutu, Manuqalo Komaitai and Karalaini Naisewa all crossed for Fiji, but a red card for Bitila Tawake denied Cunningham\u2019s side a chance to mount an impressive comeback.<\/p>\n

They will now face Wales in Exeter next Saturday as both look to end their World Cup campaigns with a win.<\/p>\n

“We were seriously under the pump early on,\u201d Cunningham said. \u201cBut I think we gave Wales something to think about ahead of next week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve got a very powerful players and if we carry hard and go at them, we’ve got every chance.”<\/p>\n

One place Cunningham hopes to see his charges improve is on their start with Scotland scoring just 94 seconds into the match.<\/p>\n

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Francesca McGhie stormed over for her fourth try of the World Cup with Rhona Lloyd soon joining her fellow wing on the scoresheet.<\/p>\n

But Fiji then thought back as Nunia Daunimoala produced a sensational linebreak before setting up Senivutu.<\/p>\n

After weathering a storm, Lloyd got her second try of the match to give Scotland a 12-point lead at half-time.<\/p>\n

The break saw the Fijiana emerge re-invigorated and after two attempts, Komaitai went over for their second.<\/p>\n

However, Tawake was sent off for a high tackle to Elis Martin that meant Fiji had to play the final 24 minutes with 14 players.<\/p>\n

McGhie got her second before Emma Orr produced a stunning run to move the game out of sight of Fiji, who ended on a high with a try from Karalaini Naisewa.<\/p>\n

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The defeat to Scotland, as well as Canada\u2019s win over Wales, means Fiji are unable to qualify for the knockout stages but can earn a second-ever win at the World Cup.<\/p>\n

“I think there was a period in the match where it got away from us,\u201d Cunningham said. “Credit to Scotland, they weathered the storm when we were camped on their line.<\/p>\n

\u201cTest matches are about fine margins and we didn’t capitalise on our chances.<\/p>\n

“We need to work on discipline and also it’s about executing in key moments and being calm. We’ve got to dust ourselves off but we need to start better.<\/p>\n

“We’ve done a lot of work on resilience and focusing on winning the next moment when something not gone our way and that was encouraging.\u201d<\/p>\n

With more than 400,000 tickets already sold, and prices starting at just \u00a35 for children and \u00a310 for adults, fans are encouraged to secure their tickets now via <\/strong>tickets.rugbyworldcup.com<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Milly McEvoy at Salford Community Stadium Fiji boss Ioan Cunningham believes his former side Wales should fear…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5009],"tags":[133817,748,33405,4884,133816,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-385780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scotland","8":"tag-bitila-tawake","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-fiji","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-ioan-cunningham","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385780","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=385780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}