Samoa captain Semo Sititi said his side were relishing the prospect of taking on World Cup favourites England in Sunday’s Pool C match at Docklands.
”To us, as players, it will be the game of our lives,” said back-row Sititi on Friday after the team had been announced.
”But we have to have faith in ourselves that we can do the job,” said Sititi, who plays club rugby in Scotland for the Borders.
The Pacific Islanders currently top Pool C on try count from England but have yet to face South Africa who went down 25-6 to Clive Woodward’s men in Perth on Saturday.
England are expected to win Sunday’s match but Samoa have a history of causing World Cup upsets. However, their coach John Boe was under no illusions about the scale of the task facing his side.
”It’s an enormous challenge for us. We are against the world’s number one. They deserve that title, they’ve earned that over a couple of years now.
”We’re not up to that standard in terms of world ranking but hopefully we can perform on the day and make our people proud of our team and excite the public at the same time,” New Zealander Boe added.
Samoa are at full strength save for wing Ron Fanuatanu, who is out with a knee injury sustained in the 46-9 win over Georgia last Sunday. His place is taken by Wellington’s Lome Fa’atau.
Assistant coach Michael Jones, the former New Zealand flanker, said Samoa had made significant progress during their victories over Georgia and Uruguay following a warm-up match against Auckland.
”There has been a lot of work to do but there’s been a definite improvement,” said Jones, a World Cup winner with the All Blacks in 1987.
”We realise we’ve got to at least have parity in the forwards with the English. It’s an old cliche but we’ve got to win up front.
”But I believe we’ve got enough there to get our guys enough good quality ball. We’ve got wonderful backs and that’s always been a hallmark of Samoan rugby,” Jones explained.
Despite fears that ace goalkicker Jonny Wilkinson may be injured by one of the tough-tackling Samoans, England coach Clive Woodward has included the fly-half in his starting side.
Asked if he thought this was a compliment to Samoa, Boe replied: ”Possibly it is but I honestly don’t care who they put out. We’ll just play who is in front of us.”
Boe said it was important Samoa didn’t spend too much time analysing England but instead concentrated on their strengths.
”Our biggest thrust has always been to play our own game, to be ourselves. The boys will tell you that I say ‘just be yourself’ all the time.
”By that I mean on attack just do what comes instinctively. They’ve got wonderful flair. And on defence, just keep our discipline, come up in a line and make our traditional hits.
”It’s built around being ourselves rather than what the opposition do.”
Boe explained that the coaching staff had worked hard on making sure the players did not feel overawed when the faced England.
”If you haven’t got self-belief you might as well stay home.
That has been one major thing we began working on months ago, self-belief, because we knew who we would be playing against in this World Cup.
”We didn’t want to come here just to make up the numbers, we wanted to come here to compete and make our people proud of us.” – Sapa-AFP