The Flying Fijians believe their time is now and are not shy talking about their intentions to take Ireland down.
The sides have met 15 times but the Pacific Island nation have never won.
While Fiji did suffer an infamous loss to Portugal at last year’s World Cup, they have been claiming notable scalps over the last 14 months.
They beat England at Twickenham in August of 2023, while they pushed Steve Borthwick’s side all the way in the World Cup quarter-final a few weeks later, eventually losing 30-24.
Fiji also handed Eddie Jones’ hapless Wallabies side a defeat in the World Cup pool stages, 22-15, so their victory over Wales at the start of the Autumn Nations Series didn’t come as a surprise.
Ranked ninth in the world after last weekend’s 33-17 win over Spain, in which they scored four second-half tries, Fiji will arrive to Dublin full of confidence, and not least because they feel that Ireland are not the same team without Johnny Sexton, who retired 13 months ago.
“We are in good form moving into the weekend, big positivity,” said scrum-half Frank Lomani ahead of Saturday’s meeting at Aviva Stadium (3.10pm).
“We spoke about it the last two days that Ireland was the number one team a few months ago.
“At the moment they are so vulnerable that we as a team and as a group we can counter that.
“The team is not really like a few months ago when Sexton was playing. There were a very good team, solid.
“But attack-wise and defensively as a team, if we work together we can break them.
“The coaches and senior players are working on that.
“But the thing is they are still in the top three or top four, there are a few areas we need to work on.
“If we keep playing how we have played in the last two games I think we will do better,” he said
Ireland have conceded 13 penalties in each of their November games to date, a 23-13 defeat to New Zealand and a 22-19 victory over Argentina.
Asked to elaborate on his claim that Andy Farrell’s side, ranked two in the world and the reigning Six Nations champions, are “vulnerable” the Fijian Drua scrum-half told RTÉ Sport: “Rugby is not a perfect game, it’s an oval ball, you bounce it, it will go either way.
“We [all] make mistakes, Ireland hasn’t been playing, I’m not going to say playing really well, but they lost a game against New Zealand, they almost got beaten last week. That’s rugby.
“That won’t change the way we prepare going into this weekend. For us, consistency is one thing that we’ve been talking about. Trusting [each other] and being patient.
“As a team, we see [Ireland] is one of the top four, that’s not going to stop us from coming for them this weekend. We will still work hard for that.”
A Fijian reporter on the Wednesday morning Zoom call said he had spoken to former Fiji, Biarritz, Racing and La Rochelle wing Sireli Bobo, who predicted that the underdogs would spring a surprise against Ireland.
“Yeah, I think he’s right,” said Lomani, who played in the 35-17 loss in Dublin two years ago.
“We’ll see how it goes…but yeah, I think we’ll get this one.
“If you see the stats way back, we almost beat Wales three or four times, it was a close contest each time. We almost beat Ireland in 2017 by one [score] so this team has come a long way.
“It’s time for us, time for the world and the rugby community to realise that we are not only beating these teams just now, we’ve almost beaten them years before.
“We are realising that we are a team that can beat the tier ones, it’s about time.
“We are getting our confidence going into big games like this, knowing that we beat these teams, Wales, Australia, England, we can beat these teams, too.”
“Discipline has been a thing to work on for this team but for the last two games, the numbers don’t lie, we haven’t got penalised for any offsides, zero offside penalties,” said the 28-year-old, whose side will be without Semi Radradra following the winger’s red card against Wales.
“That’s a massive improvement for this team. We’ve got to be consistent with that if we want to beat Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, all these teams, discipline plays a massive role in these games.
“As long as we stick together, trust our game plan. Stick to it defensively and in attack we are going to be challenging,” he said.