“For a lot of the girls, it is the first time they have been able to be away from home in an environment like this and be well-supported and be in a high-performance environment,” Fiji Rugby general manager of high performance Simon Raiwalui said.

“It is all very new. They’re very grateful for the opportunity and every win is important, but just being able to play at Suncorp, being able to play at Cbus, being able to play down at AAMI this weekend is just a huge experience for the girls. They’re just really happy to be playing against these established Super W teams. It has been a whirlwind experience.”

Women’s rugby in Fiji has grown in recent years, particularly after the women’s sevens team won bronze at the Tokyo Olympics, knocking out defending champions Australia in the quarters. The Fijiana Drua is predominantly made up of the Fiji national team and their inclusion in Super W was facilitated by funding from the Australian government’s PacificAus Sports program.

But coming into the 2022 Super W season, most of the Fijiana players hadn’t played a match in over a year due to COVID-19 restrictions in Fiji. They were limited to monthly training camps.

“We have a handful of players who have played international rugby but a lot of them didn’t play rugby until a couple of years ago,” Raiwalui said.

“It has been a program that has been built up. They had no local competition last year, so they were without matches for 12 months.”

It didn’t seem to matter. Fijiana Drua began strongly and have only got better, and the team’s exploits have captured the imagination of their rugby-mad homeland.

“It’s been a quick burn - they’re definitely making waves,” Raiwalui said.

For Hamilton, the arrival of a strong, non-Australian competitor has several upsides; not least the proof that when a women’s rugby team is given a chance to train full-time over a few months, the improvements are clear, obvious and rapid.

“I have really embraced the competition they’ve brought. It has just got better and better and because they’re invested in a full-time program at the moment, they’re over here training like professional athletes and you can see how much better they’re getting. And it shows on a broader scale how much that sort of investment can influence the women’s game,” she said.

“They clearly play a different style of footy and for us, we had never played anyone like that. Because we haven’t had (Wallaroos) games for two years, all our girls have only ever played Australian-based competition. It is just another step up and for us, it is exciting.”

The lessons of the Waratahs’ first loss were pretty easy to identify, said Hamilton.

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They conceded three tries in the first 15 minutes, and trailed 17-0, before settling and holding Fiji to a 12-10 scoreline for the rest.

“We were a bit rattled in that first half, but once we got going we knew what we had to do,” Hamilton said.

“For us, we copped it. We didn’t dwell on it for too long, this is our journey now. We won’t be surprised in the grand final, we will play our game.”

Watch every match of the Super Rugby Pacific on the Home of Rugby, Stan Sport. This week Super Round hits Melbourne in a competition first with all twelve teams taking part in a three day Rugby-Fest. Matches begin from Friday 5:30pm AEST, Saturday 4:30pm AEST, and Sunday 1:30pm AEST, all streaming ad-free, live and on demand only on Stan Sport.