Sam Cross gave Wales the perfect start against the tournament favourites with an early try which Ross Jones converted.
But Samisoni Viriviri hit back immediately with a converted try before the South Sea Islanders scooted over for three more first half tries to hold a commanding 28-7 lead at the break.
Wales winger Luke Morgan looked to have scored in the corner but he was adjudged to have knocked the ball on in the act of scoring. Fiji then showed their class by racing over for two second half tries through Setefano Cakau and Joeli Lutumailagi to seal a commanding victory.
Wales head coach Gareth Williams was bitterly disappointed with the final score-line and pointed to weak defence as the contributing factor in defeat.
“When you give that standard of opposition some loose tries they have the ability to just run away with it – all they want is time and space and you can’t afford to give them that – the first minute of the half when we took that away from them we showed they can be ordinary but we have to keep that to a sustained level throughout the game,” said Williams.
“The shape was good and the boys were in position but you can’t have boys falling off tackles – that simply isn’t good enough at this level. That proved costly for us against a quality side like Fiji. They’ve got such talented individuals they can take advantage of that and they just flooded through on us.
“From the kick-off we defended superbly and kept our shape. We made our tackles as well which resulted in us scoring by putting them under pressure but we then fell off tackles and lost our focus,” he added.
Wales now have to beat Kenya in their first game tomorrow to have any chance of going through to the Cup quarter-finals. They must also dispatch Sri Lanka who conceded 41 points against Kenya this evening.
“The points difference cost us last week in Tokyo but at the moment it is all about beating Kenya – we’ll have to see what the result is between Fiji and Kenya – our only focus at the moment is to beat Kenya and then you get to a stage where it is knockout rugby quite early on.”
