Less than 2 days to go till @dubai7s and “We are good enough to defend our title” – Samoa coach Punivalu

Samoa's head coach Viliamu Punivalu believes he has a squad ready to defend their Emirates Dubai Rugby Sevens title this weekend.

In 2012, Paul Perez scored two tries as then captain Afa Aiono guided Samoa to a 26-14 victory against the eventual HSBC Sevens World Series champions New Zealand.

Punivalu took over the reigns as Samoa coach ahead of the 2013/14 HSBC Sevens World Series and believes he has a side capable of defending their title this weekend at 7he Sevens.

"I believe the team is good enough to defend the title," said Punivalu. "We have a sightly different strategy on our approach to the selection process this time in that we decided to bring six forwards and six backs simply because of what we wanted to do.

"Unfortunately we have a lot of good players back home we had to leave behind but I am very confident and have all the trust in the world in the team and I believe they will do the job on the day.

"We only started thinking about the title a couple of weeks ago, that is when we started knowing we need to get better and lift our game. It adds some pressure, of course, and it hasn't been a good week in the last week for Samoan rugby, so I think there is even more pressure on Samoa Sevens to perform and bring some good results to the country."

With six players in Punivalu's side that were a part of the title winning side from last year's tournament, Punivalu is hoping they will be able to breed confidence amongst his side, especially the two debutants Oneone Faafou and Richie Ah Chong.

"One of the lessons I learned from the Gold Coast when I had five new players and those five players had stage fright which filtered to the other players is that if we are mentally prepared we will be okay. Having the six players from last year will be a good help.

"We won in Fiji the week before Australia and I thought we would have a chance but a few things happened.

"There is no excuse this time. We have a team and I have been working to make sure each individual is doing their job 150% and now it is just a case of the boys showing me what they have got."

SAMOA (Gold Coast, HSBC Sevens World Series round 1: 7th)

HSBC Sevens World Series, Pool D
Fixtures, November29, 2013
09.02 v Russia
13.32 v Argentina

18.54 v South Africa