Fijian Drua boss Mark Evans has criticised Rugby Australia (RA) over the women’s team’s travel schedule ahead of their Super Rugby Women’s semi final on Sunday, telling The Sydney Morning Herald the itinerary is “inequitable”.

As it stands, the Drua women’s team will arrive in Brisbane on Saturday — the day before their final-four clash with the Reds at Ballymore Stadium.

Evans also suggested that the scheduling could cause “ridiculously compromised” preparation if the team progresses to the competition’s grand final the following Saturday.

Under the tournament’s regulations, RA pays for a “maximum of three nights” of accommodation around all of the Drua’s away games.

But after expecting a “sensible” itinerary ahead of the semi, where the team would arrive in Brisbane on Friday and depart on Monday, the Drua were booked to arrive on Saturday.

The team’s return flight to Suva has also been pushed back a day later than expected, meaning the Drua could potentially be restricted to one training session at home on the Wednesday before preparing to fly to Sydney on the Thursday ahead of the grand final.

RA’s planning was impacted as the final order of the competition’s top four was not finalised until the completion of the final round on March 30.

Evans questioned the organising body’s lack of contingency planning and said he was “perplexed and bewildered” after RA refused to fly the team in a day earlier.

“I find it extraordinary. They are claiming budget,” he said.

“I know times are hard, but they are a multimillion-dollar organisation. Are you seriously telling me that in the circumstances, you can’t stretch to one extra night?

“C’mon, this is a final. They said, ‘There are your three nights’. I said, ‘Hold on, you want us to come on the Saturday so we only have 24 hours in the city before we play?’.

“I am sure it has been done previously, but that’s not how you want to prepare for finals football.

“To hide behind the word maximum is disingenuous to the extreme.

“If we win, our preparation is totally compromised. We would go back to Sydney [on Thursday] and play the Waratahs or the Force, and I doubt they’ll have been on two international flights within five days of their game.

“I don’t think it is equitable.”

It is not uncommon for Super Rugby Women’s teams to travel to away fixtures the day before a match, and sides have occasionally flown on the eve of matches in Fiji and Perth in previous years.

“The travel arrangements for the Fijian Drua are aligned with the competition guidelines and consistent with the precedents set by all travelling teams in the Super Rugby Women’s competition,” a RA statement said.

“Rugby Australia believes that the arrival of the Drua in Brisbane on the morning of the day before the game is sufficient from both a logistics and high-performance perspective.

“There were no available return flights the day after the game and accordingly Rugby Australia has offered to accommodate the team’s additional recovery and preparation needs during their time in Brisbane,” RA general manager of women’s rugby Jilly Collins said in a statement.

The Fijian Drua men’s team recently complained to Super Rugby Pacific following shabby treatment during a recent trip to New Zealand.

Ahead of the Drua’s match against the Hurricanes in February, the team landed in New Zealand just before midnight, 16 hours ahead of kick-off.

With the team unable to locate the bus booked by Super Rugby organisers to transport them to their hotel, players piled into the back of a truck booked to transport their luggage and equipment from the airport.

Ladder leaders, the NSW Waratahs Women, will host the Western Force in the second semi final on Sunday at Leichhardt Oval.