| Fadhil Yunus |
BRUNEI Darussalam national rugby team started their campaign in the 2018 Asia Rugby Championship Division III East with a 66-12 loss to Guam at the Balapan Track and Field of the Hassanal Bolkiah National Sports Complex in Berakas yesterday.
The Guamanians blew the hosts away 42-0 in a lopsided first half but Brunei got off the scoreboard with a couple of good tries from Martin Brighty and Joseva Lauvanua in the second half as well as a conversion from Shen Quan Lim.
Brunei head coach Shafeek Kamalie acknowledged the efforts of his troops despite not being able to execute their game plan “They blew us away in the first half. They were leading 42-0 at half-time. If you look at the score in the second half, basically we managed to score 12 points so we definitely closed the gap down,” said Shafeek in an interview with the media.
“But in terms of what they came on to do we just never could get to our game plan and do what we wanted to do. They just blew us away in the first half and it was points coming at regular intervals,” added the head coach.
“Our defence just could not hold up at times. There were just overlaps and gaps started appearing in the field.”
The head coach congratulated their conquerors who he described as a “well organised and well drilled team.”
“They knew exactly what they wanted to do and they came out and did it. We knew what we wanted to do but they did it to us before we could do it to them.
“It is difficult to come back from a 42-point deficit so what we’ve told the boys at half-time in the changing room that we draw a line in the first half. It didn’t happen and we start new and try to implement what we want to do,” the South African continued.
“All in all, I’m not happy with the result but I am happy with the effort that the team has put in. We will obviously have to work really hard when we play China on Saturday so there is a lot of work ahead of us. But I do believe that we can bounce back from this.”
“The score-line is a massive one but for us the game is done so now we look to the next game.”
Shafeek shared that 85 per cent of the team is made up of under-23 players with many of them just starting out their international career adding that there is still a long way to go at this level.
“The important thing is that we have to learn from every experience. We will regroup, we will look at what we can improve and we will come out and try to do better next time.”
Brunei’s previous international experience was in 2015 when they faced Lao PDR and Mongolia and Shafeek said that most of his players were still at school at that time.
“It is a new team and though we have a lot of experienced players, the core of the team is quite young and quite new. We just have to take it on the chin and take it as it comes and come back again on Saturday,” added the head coach.
Meanwhile Guam head coach Tony Penn was pleased with the outcome of the game though he admitted the team lost structure in the second half.
“Obviously overall I’m very happy with the outcome of the game. In the second half we made a few changes and I thought we lost our structure a little bit.”
The head coach credited Brunei for coming out as a spirited side in the second half before moving on the need to improve on their performance ahead of their match against China tomorrow.
“China is a very tough side. Every team in this level of the competition is tough. They will be very structured and organised and we just got to work on a lot of our policies, game plan and structures.”
“We’ll do a little bit of debrief and assess that and go from there and looking at improving on what we lack at from the game and looking at improving against China,” he added.
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