Geraint John interview
What can you take out of that game?
There's only Fiji that can play like Fiji, and I thought we actually threw the ball away, and we offloaded the ball in contact, tried to sort of keep the ball alive, but in the last couple of minutes we ran in to the spaces in between contact, kept our feet going, turned the ball over a lot better than we have in the first part, and the result was a couple of tries. I thought we lacked a little bit of composure in that first half, and once they're on a roll they're on a roll. It's a disappointing way to finish, but as I said to them "It's a new day tomorrow, we're in the Top 8, and we've got to front up tomorrow" so the next few hours are important in terms of recovery.
How do you prepare for a game against South Africa, who've looked very strong so far?
Yeah, that's the nature of the game innit, I thought this morning that the first two games those teams really had a go at them, and I think it's the same. We've got to do what do, rather not think about the opposition, got to make sure that we're prepared, we know what they'll do in terms of kickoffs and re-starts, and we know how they play, we've got to make sure that we turn up and play our game tomorrow and make sure we control the ball a lot better in the contact area because when South Africa look at that they'll probably come hard and press at us hard. In defence we've really got to make sure we work hard and control that contact area as it'll be vital tomorrow.
Australia upset South Africa in the Semi's here last year, can you take any confidence out of that, or is that just water under the bridge?
I think it's difficult to say things like that, we should be confident.. We've beaten Fiji on numerous occasions as well but you've got to play a certain way and have that control and in the game itself you never know what's going to happen from one day to the next, and I think you saw that today in some of the earlier games. You saw the Kenya Wales game which was pretty tight, you saw Pool D where the games we're all tight. Nobody probably would have guessed the first result with Argentina and England. We've got to be confident in the way we play, do what we can do, make sure we can turn up tomorrow and really make sure in that contact area we control the ball a lot better than what we did.
Injuries?
All fine. We pulled blokes because they were tired. That's why we have a squad of 12, so we can make those changes.
Where does that lack of composure come from?
I think we haven't played enough games, which is just something we need to do. Fiji's defence is, you know.. last week we didn't face one team with that kind of D in Noosa, that big press D, got right up in our faces, but we've got to sort of manage that. It's just continual practice and continual work in the contact area. We've not done a lot there this year, we've had other specialist coaches come in.. But that first half was disappointing, we need more confidence, sometimes when teams get really physical like that you lose that confidence to go wide.