What the Wallabies did to Georgia that has Fiji worried
Fiji forwards coach Brad Harris has warned his pack they have to negate the “brutality” of Australia who proved they have a world-class forward unit after dominating Georgia up front in their opening pool victory.
Fiji must win this match, following their narrow loss to Wales, to keep their hopes of a quarter-final place alive and Harris has painted a clear picture of what will be required on Sunday in St Etienne saying the game will deliver a “dingdong battle up front.”
Harris, who will join Melbourne Rebels after the World Cup, said: “I think it’s their (Australia) combination of brutality and good size of their ball carriers. I think there are four or five really dominant ball carriers that they look to use to get their go-forward game going.
“I thought that their maul defence was good against a strong Georgia team who tried to maul a fair bit. Obviously, I thought the Australian scrum got on top of the Georgian team as well, which is an amazing feat in terms of the strength of the Georgian pack side.
“Look, we’re aware of the strengths that they’ll bring to their game but we’re also aware of the skill sets of our boys and the power and the aggression that we can bring to the game.
“So, it’s going to be a dingdong battle up front. But I wouldn’t swap our boys for anyone. We’d like them to get on there and get that stopped up. I think we’ve got to look internally at ourselves as well. I think that if we sharpen up on our completion when we enter their 22, and we score a couple of those tries, then referee doesn’t become an issue at all,” Harris said.
“So, what we’re focusing on this week is tidying up our performance, making sure that when we don’t have the ball, we’re nice and disciplined about our tackle height and making really good decisions at the offensive breakdown.
“And if we paint those good pictures, then hopefully we can apply some pressure when we’ve got the ball. Hopefully the penalty count will be in our favour and we can come out on top.”
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Sophie De Goede is one of the best players we’ve ever produced. Kicked all the points, 2 try assists, line out takes, carries, tackles, charge downs… what a player
Go to commentsThe guy had just beasted himself in a scrum and the blood hadn't yet returned to his head when he was pushed into a team mate. He took his weight off his left foot precisely at the moment he was shoved and dropped to the floor when seemingly trying to avoid stepping on Hyron Andrews’ foot. I don't think he was trying to milk a penalty, I think he was knackered but still switched on enough to avoid planting 120kgs on the dorsum of his second row’s foot. To effectively “police” such incidents with a (noble) view to eradicating play acting in rugby, yet more video would need to be reviewed in real time, which is not in the interest of the game as a sporting spectacle. I would far rather see Farrell penalised for interfering with the refereeing of the game. Perhaps he was right to be frustrated, he was much closer to the action than the only camera angle I've seen, however his vocal objection to Rodd’s falling over doesn't legitimately fall into the captain's role as the mouthpiece of his team - he should have kept his frustration to himself, that's one of the pillars of rugby union. I appreciate that he was within his rights to communicate with the referee as captain but he didn't do this, he moaned and attempted to sway the decision by directing his complaint to the player rather than the ref. Rugby needs to look closely at the message it wants to send to young players and amateur grassroots rugby. The best way to do this would be to apply the laws as they are written and edit them where the written laws no longer apply. If this means deleting laws such as ‘the put in to the scrum must be straight”, so be it. Likewise, if it is no longer necessary to respect the referee’s decision without questioning it or pre-emptively attempting to sway it (including by diving or by shouting and gesticulating) then this behaviour should be embraced (and commercialised). Otherwise any reference to respecting the referee should be deleted from the laws. You have to start somewhere to maintain the values of rugby and the best place to start would be giving a penalty and a warning against the offending player, followed by a yellow card the next time. People like Farrell would rapidly learn to keep quiet and let their skills do the talking.
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