Mixed reaction
THE 35-17 defeat of the Vodafone Flying Fijians to Ireland at the Aviva Stadium on Sunday has brought mixed reactions to head coach Vern Cotter.
He was happy and at the same time hinted out some of the areas the side needs to work on while speaking to the Irish Times.
“I am really happy with the way that we started, we got seven points up, but we sort of didn’t push on. We could have built on that lead he said.
“We had a couple of important lineout plays that we fumbled and put the ball down. If we had strung those together we would have applied more pressure and that’s something we need to learn to do, not just be satisfied with seven points but to build on top of it.
Fiji lost two players to yellow cards, Manasa Saulo and Api Ratuniyarawa and Albert Tuisue received a red one.
“So that is something that we have come away from the last two games with; obviously we will talk about the character of the guys digging in when we were down to 13 players. It could have been a very bad day for us.
“The character in defending mauls and being down to 13 is tough in international rugby especially when you are playing the top team in the world. They were positives. We wanted to take things away from these two games against Scotland and you boys, Ireland.”
The report said Cotter’s query came after television match official Chris Hart drew the attention of the referee Mathieu Raynal to the incident (Tuisue for a high shot to the jawline of Irish outhalf Joey Carbery), and after reviewing it, the French official correctly adjudicated that it warranted a red card.
“There is a meeting after this series about the state of the game and we need to sit down and talk about it, people around rugby need to sit down and talk about what’s best. At the moment, it’s tough.”
“It is probably not the right place to bring it out in the media. There are certain frustrations around ... all of us have said ever since we were involved in the game is (that we want) consistency, be really consistent.
“We get a call, 50/50 of a guy (Ireland fullback Jimmy O’Brien) who is using his knees on the ground.
“It is either 50 right or 50 wrong. It is not 50-50. He didn’t or he did. There is a bit of frustration around that but hopefully things can get sorted out reasonably soon.”
Meanwhile he said the team could have done a bit better.
“We would like to have done a lot better. We are disappointed with the score. We have high expectations and high standards, so we will build towards that. We have another game next week to try and put that in place,” Cotter said.
“We are better running out of your half than kicking, aren’t we? We might as well start running a bit more.
“We can’t do the same thing over and over again.
“The fact that we were able to alternate between kicking and playing is something we need to develop, to be smarter in how we use the ball.
“But when we got a bit of free space the boys worked hard, which is good.”