26 Sep 2012

Sport: Waqa looking to unlocks Tonga's potential in 7s

10:08 am on 26 September 2012

Tonga's new sevens coach says he's looking forward to building the team into a world force.

Eddie Waqa has been appointed director of sevens rugby in Tonga, and is responsible for both the mens and womens programmes.

His first tournament in charge will be next month's World Series opener on the Gold Coast, a tournament he won last year as Fiji's interim coach.

Waqa says the team has a lot of skill and potential but there's plenty of room for improvement.

"If you see Tongan Sevens year in year out they've never been fit during those outings - those are some of things I wanted to change over there. Especially the types of training they went through and I'll make sure that we have a strong base at home in Tonga, that we have some competitions within, where we can identify players who can perform at that level."

Eddie Waqa says his first goal is to make the team a regular fixture on the World Series.