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McKee IDs Fiji's headline mistakes against Japan

Japan were proved too good for Fiji.

Fiji head coach John McKee and his players return home tomorrow (Mon) determined to address the “critical mistakes” that undermined their cause against Japan who recorded a 34-21 win at the start of the Pacific Nations Cup (PNC) at the Kamaishi Recovery Memorial Stadium

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Fiji’s cause was not helped by the yellow card received by Filipo Nakosi in the first half and McKee wants to see more composure from his players as they prepare to take on Canada and Samoa.

McKee, whose team are the defending PNC title holders, saw Sam Matavesi score a brace of tries to open his test account and said: “We going to take some very quick learnings from the Japan game. Once we were behind and chasing in the game, we lacked composure to build the pressure and also we tried to force the play too much which resulted in turnovers.

“In defence we made some critical mistakes, little system errors where players either didn’t understand their role probably or didn’t execute their role as they should have. We made some good breaks but we were not able to build the pressure as we were forced a last pass or offload which was turned over.”

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The Flying Fijians arrive home tomorrow(Mon) and will link up with those players left behind to concentrate on individual training following the drawn series with the New Zealand Maori All Blacks.

McKee added “We will get back to Fiji on Monday morning and link up with the players who have been training at home, to prepare for the match against Canada. We are looking forward to getting back to home and also for wins on home soil for our fans. “

Fiji face Canada next Saturday at Suva’s ANZ Stadium and play Samoa at the same venue on August 10. Canada got off to the worst possible start to their PNC campaign as they prepare for the World Cup with a 47-19 drubbing from neighbours USA Eagles.

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J
JW 5 hours ago
'Let's not sugarcoat it': Former All Black's urgent call to protect eligibility rules

Yep, no one knows what will happen. Thing is I think (this is me arguing a point here not a random debate with this one) they're better off trialing it now in a controlled environment than waiting to open it up in a knee jerk style reaction to a crumbling organtization and team. They can always stop it again.


The principle idea is that why would players leave just because the door is ajar?


BBBR decides to go but is not good enough to retain the jersey after doing it. NZ no longer need to do what I suggest by paying him to get back upto speed. That is solely a concept of a body that needs to do what I call pick and stick wth players. NZR can't hold onto everyone so they have to choose their BBBRs and if that player comes back from a sabbatical under par it's a priority to get him upto speed as fast as possible because half of his competition has been let go overseas because they can't hold onto them all. Changing eligibility removes that dilemma, if a BBBR isn't playing well you can be assured that someone else is (well the idea is that you can be more assured than if you only selected from domestic players).


So if someone decides they want to go overseas, they better do it with an org than is going to help improve them, otherwise theyre still basically as ineligible as if they would have been scorning a NZ Super side that would have given them the best chance to be an All Black.

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