MERAB SHARIKADZE
T he Georgia centre who captained his countr y at the 2019 World Cup
EVERYBODY IN Georgia is talking about the Autumn Nations Cup and is very excited. It’s a great opportunity for us and we have to use it. It’s very important for us as players but also the nation as well. People have been waiting for this opportunity for a long time. That puts a bit of pressure on us, but that’s sport and every sportsman needs to know how to deal with pressure.
This autumn we’ll have a lot of quality games – we wouldn’t even have this many quality games at a World Cup, with the Scotland match before the Autumn Nations Cup. We’ve never had so many games in Georgian rugby history one after the other and it’s a huge experience for us.
Not many things have changed for us since the World Cup. Levan Maisashvili is now head coach but we have pretty much the same players from 2019. So the main things are still there, even if the game plan has changed a little bit.
I’ve known Levan since childhood.
He’s a good coach with a lot of experience. He’s been coaching for 30 years and has been champion of the Georgian championship ten times, or something like that. He was the defensive coach of the national team for five years and he’s the right person for us to take over; he knows our mentality, knows what the team needs and how to work with us. I think we can achieve things with him, good things.
Attack is the part of the game you need to have to win games, so we’re concentrating on playing more in attack. We’ve also had much more time together so we probably have a more complete game plan than ever before.
Half the team – those players based in Georgia – started training in May and before the autumn games we were in camp solidly, following all the instructions and recommendations relating to coronavirus. We didn’t have the boys based in France but we trained hard, then in the evenings we would play PlayStation, watch rugby games or movies, play dominoes – nothing crazy!
We then had a camp in France before the Scotland game and some foreign coaches have been with us since then – David Humphreys, Neil Doak, Sébastien Bruno and Calvin Morriss.
In the Autumn Nations Cup, first of all we play England and we’re expecting a good game, a quality game from ourselves and England as well. We’re all concentrating on playing a good game and feel it’ll come if we play the way we want to play.
They have much more in their bag, in their arsenal, than they would have shown in two training sessions against us last year, but at least we know what it’s like to have trained against them and know what they are capable of. It helps us with our performance.
We’ve played against Ireland and Wales before, so we have that experience of what we should expect from them. We’re one step ahead of where we were a few years ago because we’ve played these teams before. That’s the experience we’re looking for – to play against these kinds of teams more.
I’ve had nearly a year out with injury. I had ACL surgery after the World Cup – apparently I played at the World Cup with a broken ACL! Two weeks before going to the World Cup, I got injured and I didn’t play the two Scotland games before the tournament or the first World Cup game, but I did play in the three others. The team needed it and I needed it – it was one of the biggest dreams of my career to play at the 2019 World Cup. Hopefully next time I’ll be in better shape.
I’ve been doing rehab with Ed Barry, our physio, and William Lavis, our strength and conditioning coach, for almost a year, so I need to give a big thank you to them. I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t be playing now, without them. Now I feel great and I’m ready to go.
“We’ve been waiting for this opportunity for a long time”