A Young Sables player chashes Samoan player
Paul Munyuki Harare Bureau
YOUNG Sables coach Brandon Brider is not a happy man following his side’s poor performance that was characterised by poor execution of basic skills, leading to a 54-24 defeat to Pacific Ocean islanders Samoa in the World Rugby Under-20 Trophy opener at Harare Sports Club on Tuesday.
A host of handling errors, poor kicking abilities and losing possession at contact point were some of the weaknesses in the Zimbabwe camp while they had no match for the giant Samoans in terms of physicality.
The Young Sables lost possession at the point of contact and were dominated on the scrums but they had a better chance in the air as they won most of the line-outs, including several from the opposition.
“Man for man against Samoa we were always going to be smaller given their physicality, they looked mentally better but we weren’t that (mentally prepared) today.
“We made a lot of handling errors, kicking errors and that put us at the back foot,” said the former Young Sables back-liner.
Thirty minutes into the game, Zimbabwe were trailing 26-0 through four tries, two of them converted, but it was in the last minute of the first half that the hosts scored a try through hooker Tinotenda Musasanura with Shingi Katsvere getting the bonus points off his boot.
Zimbabwe’s midfield was troubled as fly-half Tadiwa Gochera was out of sorts and of the three restarts he took, twice he kicked directly into touch, unnecessarily giving away possession to Samoa and this prompted the change of kicker to Katsvere.
Scrummyrs had his fair share of errors as a try went begging after he was unable to take a pass from a short lineout move close to the Samoan line.
Going into the break with a reason to believe though trailing 28-6, Zimbabwe came back into the second half with zeal and were the first to touch down as Kudzai Munangi’s try two minutes into this period and substitute flanker Daniel Nyamugama also crossed the whitewash.
With a new points system under trial, tries were increased in value to six, penalties reduced to two points and penalty tries will be worth eight-points, with no conversion necessary in a bid to promote running rugby.
However, Samoa coach Ramsey Tomokino feels despite the win — which is the biggest of the tournament so far — his side did not come out as he had expected as they failed to display their “A game”.
“That was not our A Game though I’ve to be pleased with them (Samoa players) because we managed a win but we were too individual and we went away from the set game plan.
“We still’ve Uruguay and Fiji to go and in this competition any team can beat any team, we had a chance to watch them both play today (Tuesday), so we’ve to take our game seriously,” added Tomokino.
He, however, believes that Zimbabwe were let down by their kicking game and would have been a much better entity had they managed to get things right in this department.
“Zimbabwe aren’t a side to take lightly, they were actually good and there are a number of good players in their side and were able to upset our rhythm a little bit and if they had their kicking right they would’ve had a much better game,” he said.
Zimbabwe’s next game is on Saturday when they take on Uruguay at midday in the second game of the day with the Pacific Ocean derby getting the day underway as Fiji and Samoa face off at 10am.
Group B games will see debutants Spain, who beat Hong Kong on Tuesday, taking on Namibia, who upset the United States in the first game, at 2pm before the main clash of the day between the United States and Hong Kong at 4pm.