Fiji Bati coach Wise Kativerata [middle] during the team announcement

This year’s Pacific Championship is an important one for the Fiji Bati as there’ll be a promotion relegation.

At the moment the Bati is playing in the Pacific Bowl with Papua New Guinea and Cook Islands while Tonga, Australia and New Zealand are competing in the Pacific Cup.

This year’s Pacific Bowl champion will play the third placed team from the Pacific Cup and the winner is going to feature in Pacific Cup next year.

Fiji Bati coach Wise Kativerata says this is the reason he selected players based on form.

“Every game we have to count it as a final that’s why we’ve picked a very balanced squad this year for the Bati, a lot of the players we’ve picked performed from their clubs so it’s important we pick the one’s that perform so they can translate that to our national team.”

Next Saturday, three games will be played at the HFC Bank Stadium in Suva starting with a match between 2023 Vodafone Cup champs Saru Dragons and the winner of the same competition from Papua New Guinea.

Samoa and Tonga’s women’s teams will then play in the next match before the Bati face the PNG Kumuls to wrap up round one of the Pacific Bowl.

You can watch the action live on FBC Sports.