James Slipper of the Wallabies faced the media recently and touched on their previous defeat against the Flying Fijians. The experienced forward admitted that they, as a team, were indeed frightened while playing against Fiji, but now, as per the veteran, the team has started to work on their weaknesses.
To add to the good news, the team seems to be in a good position and is ready to beat the mighty dragons at Lyon, as per the veteran. The Australian team needs to beat them in the next match to be able to at least qualify for the quarter-finals.
If they lose in their next match, Eddie’s boys might likely get knocked out in the group stage, happening for the very first time in Wallabies’ World Cup history. The last time against the Fijians, their performance was devastating.
They changed their game plan at the last moment. Rather than going with the usual, they decided to resort to the crash-and-bash tactic. Slipper said that there is a good chance that the Welsh players might have taken notes by now on the preceding match, how Fiji was able to create pressure on us in the midst of the game.
Wallabies’ Slipper contemplate their loss to the Fijians
The prop praised the Fijians for the way they played their last match. He mentioned that, indeed, they played a very physical match, and even though from the start all of us were expecting them to play to enhance their spacing on the field, they went for all-in from the start.
This tactic startled the whole crew as we had never seen them play like that before, and by the time we gained our composure, we realized that there was not much time left in the game, which exuberated even more pressure from the opponent’s end, resulting in a terrible loss.
They indeed took the game away from us. Their line-up had all the right players at the right positions with plenty of caliber and experience under their belt, yet this match was a major step for us to ensure a better standing against Wales in the upcoming match.
Yet, the Aussie was pretty calm about the whole scenario as he went on to say that even though it’s a game of utter importance and we sure need to win it again, it’s not as hard as it seems. This is going to be my 4th World Cup, and trust me, we have seen worse than this and still were able to prevail against all odds.
In the next match against Wales, We just need to ensure that we match with their physicality. Yes, we do lack it, but for the past couple of weeks, we have been training rigorously under pressure to ensure our victory over Wales.
Even though we have lost 6 of the seven matches in the tournament so far, Eddie and I have immense confidence in this group, and with that being said, we are truly determined that rather than repeating history, we are going to win against the Welsh giants and secure a spot at the quarter-finals.
