Matavesi: Fiji are no longer a one trick pony

Northampton hooker Sam Matavesi believes Fiji are proving they are no longer a one trick pony and have the ability to limit their attacking horizons to dig themselves out of trouble as they prepare to clinch a Rugby World Cup quarter-final place against Portugal next weekend in France.

Against Georgia, the Flying Fijians had to come back from 0-9 down in the first half to register a 17-12 win after one of their most stuttering performances this year. The line out misfunctioned which reflected on both Matavesi and the rest of the unit and a repeat against a Portugal side that caused Australia real problems could be costly. Fiji just need one more point to ensure a last eight place and eject double former champions Australia from the Cup.

Matavesi told the Fiji Times: “People think of Fiji and they think of fast-flowing and scoring tries from our own tryline that are incredible, but I think as we’ve seen at this World Cup, to win these games, it’s set-piece first. Our line-out wasn’t good enough, we were losing collisions, but we still won.

“In the past with Fiji in these games we’ve lost, we haven’t found a way to come back, so to actually come back and win is a massive credit to this team.

“I don’t want to take any credit away from Georgia, they were outstanding, but we need to give Portugal the utmost respect that they deserve. If we can get ourselves right then I think we’ll be fine, but obviously (it’s about) us doing that.

“If we had got five points (against Georgia) we would have been through (to the quarter-finals) and that’s an ideal world, but it hasn’t come to that so we still have to turn up, beat Portugal, give them the full respect and we’ll see. Everyone is a bit frustrated, the performance wasn’t good enough, we know that, for a lot of reasons, but we still won and we still have a massive game to get through to the quarter-finals.

“We were sort of losing the contact in defence against Georgia, we needed to start winning some collisions, start going forward, we were hitting quite close to their ruck and then going wide without really earning it, and it was easy to defend.”