SUVA – The Flying Fijians hope of making the 2011 Rugby World Cup quarter-finals was all but dashed when they failed to fly against a fired-up and more hungrier Samoan side at Eden Park.
After holding the Fijians 12-0 at half-time, the Mahonri Schwalger-captained Samoa scored two tries to help them stop Fiji 27-7.
Flying Fijians captain Deacon Manu said they failed to do everything that was expected of them.
Manu said they gave away a lot of possession and in international matches that was not good enough.
“We failed to fire any shots in the first half but regrouped at half-time and talked about why we were not moving forward “After the break we believed we were still in the game even though we were 12 points behind,” Manu said. “I think credit must be given to the Samoa defence on one-on-one tackles and not respecting the ball enough from ourselves.”
“We handed over almost like 20 times in the contact area and in international matches turning over that amount of possession you can’t wins games.
“I think why we lost was because we couldn’t go through our phases.
