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'Pass that back to Eddie' - Fiji coach's message to Jones over kava comments
By Ian Cameron
Fiji assistant coach Brad Harris has returned serve at Eddie Jones' following 'kava' comments the embattled Wallabies head coach made about what his team would be doing on their week off.
The Aussies are effectively seeing out a 7-day stay of execution in Pool C, where results hang on the results of Wales versus Georgia and Fiji versus Portugal.
Yesterday Jones suggested he and his team - who face a likely Rugby World Cup exit after completing all the games - would take some cava to Fiji camp in their week off, presumably in an attempt to put the Flying Fijians off their game against Portugal.
"I might take some kava to Fiji, think of giving Marika [Koroibete] and Suli [Vunivalu] credit cards and get them to go to the Fijian camp with some kava. Maybe that might work," joked Jones.
Harris was quizzed on the comments today and he gave as good as he got, joking that he was planning to take the sexagenarian coach's credit card after they beat Portugal.
"We will take Eddie's credit card after we beat Portugal. Pass that back to Eddie, we'll take his credit card to buy some kava for our team function.
Joking aside, the Fijians aren't taking the Portuguese - one of the Rugby World Cup's surprise packages - lightly.
"We have another tough battle," said Harris. "I thought Wales had to fight really hard to get a win against Portugal, they scored their fourth try in the last play of the game and Portugal had a tonne of momentum in that game. It was pretty similar to Australia, they managed to get their points when Portugal had a player in the sin bin. But for large parts of the game the Portuguese set piece was functioning well and they certainly moved the ball around in attack and really caused some problems."
Fiji got the win against Georgia on Saturday but it was by far their poorest performance of the tournament to date.
"We have had a pretty good look at the game today [against Georgia], it was a really tough battle. We knew it was going to be. There were certain parts of our game we weren't happy with so we have identified that and had some really good discussion in the group and we're looking to iron that out over the next couple of days and improve for Portugal.
"I think the start to our game, I think we knew Georgia were going to be physical and that we had to be quite combative in our game. We made an error off the restart, we had a line-out that didn't work at the start of the game ether and a few errors on attack. What that did was gave them quite a lot of possession and allowed them to apply a bit of pressure to us and start their game well and get a bit of scoreboard pressure. There are times we are going to be challenged at the start of games and one of the things we need to do is making sure we are executing our role of getting our skill sets right."
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Warren, if you think you should stay on coaching Wales, you are beyond deluded. If you love Wales & Welsh rugby as much as you say you do (& I'm sure you probably do) you should resign immediately so this once proud & passionate rugby nation can rebuild without you. How many of your players will make the British & Irish Lions squad.?
It's time to walk the plank.!
Go to commentsYeah nar I pretty much agree with that sentiment, wasn't just about the lineout though.
Yeah, I think it's the future of SR, even TRC. Graham above just now posting about how good a night it was with a dbl header of ENGvSA and NZvFrance, and now I don't want to kick SA or Argentina out of TRC but it would be great if in this next of the woods 2 more top teams could come in to create more of these sort of nights (for rugby's appeal). Often Arg and SA and both travel here and you get those games but more often doesn't work out right.
Obviously a long way off but USA and Japan are the obvious two. First thing we need to do is get Eddie Jones kicked out of Japan so they can start improving again and then get a couple of US teams in SRP (even if one its just a US based and augmented Jaguares).
It will start off the whole conferences are crap debate again (which I will continue to argue vehemently against), but imagine a 6 team Pacific conference, Tokyo Sunwolves (drafted from Tokyo JRLO teams), Tokyo All Stars (made up of best remaining foreign players and overseas drafts), ALL Nihon (best of local non Tokyo based talent, inc China/Korea etc, with mainland Japan), a could of West Coast american franchises and perhaps a second self PI driven Hawai'i based team, or Jagaures. So I see a short NFL like 3 or 4 month comp as fitting best, maybe not even a full round, NZvAUSvPAC, all games taking place within a 6hr window. Model for NZ will definitely still require a competitive and funded NPC!
On the Crusaders, I liked last years ending with Grace on the bench (ovbiously form dependent but thats how it ended) and Lio-Willie at 8. I could have Blackadder trying to be a 7 but think balance will be used with him at 6 and Kellow as 7. Scott Barrett is an international 6 sized player. It is just NZ style/model that pushes him into the tight, I reckon he'd be a great loose player, and saders have Strange and Cahill as bigger players (plus that change could draw someone like Darry back). Same with Haig now, hes not grown yet but Barrett hight and been playing 6, now that the Highlanders have only chosen two locks he'll be playing lock, and that is going to change his growth trajectory massively, rather than seeing him grow like an International 6.
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