The Fiji Rugby Union (FRU) sacked former girls’s captain Laijipa Naulivou 4 days into her job as Director of Rugby after she mentioned the ladies’s recreation had a “homosexual drawback”.
Laijipa Naulivou resigned as director of rugby earlier than her appointment was cancelled by the Fiji Rugby Union to strengthen a “dedication to upholding skilled requirements and safeguarding the integrity of Fiji Rugby.”
The FRU added on Wednesday it “categorically rejects any type of discrimination.”
Naulivou, the primary captain of the Fiji girls’s staff, mentioned in an interview revealed by the Fiji Solar “those that performed with me know that I don’t condone being homosexual for girls in rugby.”
“I all the time communicate in opposition to it and I do know I am very unpopular in that space with those that follow it,” she mentioned, later referring to “this homosexual drawback” as one of many points for rugby in Fiji.
The report cited alleged rifts associated to sexuality within the girls’s sevens squad as a motive for outcomes on the Paris Olympics final 12 months. Three years after taking bronze on the Tokyo Olympics, Fiji misplaced all 5 video games and positioned twelfth and final in Paris.
“The views expressed by Laijipa Naulivou are her private opinions and don’t replicate the official place of FRU,” the union mentioned. “Our girls’s staff and all gamers can relaxation assured that this may by no means affect their alternatives, illustration, and continued improvement as integral members of Fiji Rugby.
“FRU strongly promotes inclusion and non-discrimination as elementary rules of the game,” it mentioned. “A brand new appointment will probably be made in the end by a rigorous and clear choice course of.”
