Although winning with bonus points may sound easy, the Flying Fijians know it’s actually quite difficult.
Australia’s 6-40 loss to Wales Monday has put Fiji in a good position to advance to the last eight.
In order to do so, they must beat both Georgia and Portugal with bonus points.
Head coach Simon Raiwalui understands the enormity of this challenge and emphasizes the crucial need to prepare thoroughly to confront these opponents head-on.
“It’s the same for us, we are looking forward to this week. There’s a lot of talk out there about what we need and what we need is to prepare well and perform in the weekend. We’ve got huge respect for Georgia, we’ve played them a number of times, we’re at similar stages of our development and we know it’s going to be a really huge challenge. We’re going to put our best preparation forward and hopefully perform on Saturday.”
Meanwhile, discipline has certainly improved for the Flying Fijians based on the statistics from their recent games.
The penalty count against the national side have not hit double figures since their match against Japan on 05 August.
Fiji conceded seven penalties against Japan, England and Australia while there were nine when they played France.
Flying Fijians assistant coach Glen Jackson says the team is trying its best to minimise the penalty count.
“Three things we want to do, one is play like Fijians but one of the major ones is discipline and it’s been four games in a row we’re under 10 penalties and it was a target for us, we can’t afford to play all this hard rugby and let sides an easy way into the 22 and most of that if you look at rugby now is around discipline and poor penalties.”
Jackson believes it’s the players who should be commended for sticking to the team’s plan.
“The boys got to take a lot of credit they’ve worked really hard on their fitness, especially around the offside stuff we’ve become disciplined around that, you can see we’ve only had one yellow card, we’ve had no really foul play either but again we’ve highlighted for 12 weeks that this is something we really have to work on.”
Fiji only yellow card at the World Cup was in the first game against Wales where Lekima Tagitagivalu was sent off.
Fiji faces Georgia on Sunday at 3:45am and the side will be named on Friday.
SOURCE: FBC SPORTS/PACNEWS
