For Fiji legend Waisale Serevi creating rugby awareness is No. 1 goal as India coach

NEW DELHI: Waisale Serevi, known as the 'King of The Sevens', had limited knowledge about India prior to accepting the challenge of transforming the country's rugby scene. His main goal is to increase awareness and understanding of the sport among the Indian population.
Serevi, aged 56, has been inducted into the 'Hall of Fame' for his contributions to rugby.He has now assumed the role of head coach for both the men's and women's rugby sevens teams in India. Notably, Serevi has been a strong advocate for the inclusion of rugby sevens in the Olympic Games.
"For me, normally I don't follow rugby on this side of the world, in Asia. But I've seen teams playing rugby on this side of the world," Serevi told PTI in an exclusive interaction.
"Yes, rugby in India is like maybe five per cent of the population knows (about) — that is exactly what we are trying to build at the moment — we're trying to get rugby awareness," he said.
Serevi added, "You cannot go to (point) number 12 when you forget about number 2, 3, 4, 5. The most important thing for me is to do rugby awareness. The result will come anyway. Every big thing starts with a small thing," he said.
Serevi was quick in determining the talent that is already there in the national teams.
"In terms of both men and women's team. The coaches have done a lot of good work. I've seen a couple of good teams. I have seen forwards, big forwards. I have seen backs, the halfbacks. In all positions on the rugby field, they have it here," he said.
"I am excited to have them in the camp and then to try and help them understand the game, help them play what kind of rugby that I want them to play in other competitions," said Serevi.
He added, "We have the players that's needed in each position, like the forwards, what we call it in rugby, the forwards and the backs. We have wingers which are fast players.
"We have centres who are creating the space for the wingers. We have the halfbacks with the connection between the forwards and the backs and we have some forwards, quite big boys," he added.
Serevi, a former player-coach who led the Fiji team to the World Series final in 2005-06, acknowledged that his decision to take on the Indian coaching position after working in Russia, USA, and Jamaica might have caught many off guard.
"A lot of people in the world, they are surprised that I'm in India. But like I said, I'm so excited given this opportunity of trying to help, give a hand to the country that needs help, the rugby India program," he said.
Managing both the men's and women's national teams simultaneously could prove challenging in terms of workload, but Serevi has a clear vision for his approach.
"The good thing is we already have the HPU, which is the high performance (centre) and we have assistant coaches that are here that will look after the team. It's not only me alone,” he said.
"We have two young South African coaches who have been here for the last couple of years. They have been doing a great job. They've been going around and coaching a couple of teams here that have won the Nationals and the Sevens tournament here," Serevi said.
In addition to his coaching duties, Serevi will also focus on identifying and nurturing new talent for Indian rugby.
"There are players out there that are not recognised. There might be players out there, still out there, raw talent out there in states. The main thing for me now is to try and look at the players that we have, train the players that we have," he said.