Kiwis Coach struggles for answers after Tonga shock

By Michael Burgess

Kiwis coach Stacey Jones doesn’t believe there was anything wrong with his team’s preparation or attitude heading into the match against Tonga – despite the horror first-half performance on Saturday.

The Kiwis lost a thriller – 25-24 – with a 76th-minute Isaiya Katoa field goal proving decisive – on a famous night for the Pacific team. It was close at the death, really close, as Jamayne Isaako missed a late penalty shot and while Shaun Johnson and Isaako had chances for a field goal.

The Kiwis had that opportunity thanks to a fine comeback, scoring four unanswered tries to level the scores after an hour. But that revival couldn’t mask the shocking first period, where the Kiwis were all at sea.

Tonga were totally dominant, smashing the Kiwis up the middle and finding space out wide and only some desperate defence stopped the deficit getting completely out of reach.

“We were just physically battered,” admitted Jones. “They just ran harder, tackled harder, forced us into errors and it compounded and we just lost focus on jobs at times. Defensive errors, we gave up inside shoulders, gave up a couple of soft tries, defensive stuff that is not in our principles.”

The Kiwis were coming off a short turnaround, after a physical battle against the Kangaroos in Christchurch and are missing a number of top liners. Tonga were at near full strength and fresh after a week off.

But even with those caveats, the first half will raise questions about the Kiwis’ focus and environment because something clearly wasn’t right, those Jones denied there were issues leading in.

“We were clear on how we went but we will obviously look back and see if there was anything we could have done differently,” said Jones. “That’s a conversation with the leadership, the coaches and trainers around could we have done anything differently, we will definitely review it ... the players will review their performance. I felt we prepared really good for the week off the back of some good signs against Australia.”

Captain James Fisher-Harris made no excuses, admitting the Kiwis had failed to show up.

“We knew they were going to come out like that but we just didn’t front up, that’s just the facts, they came out firing and blew us away a little bit,” said Fisher-Harris. “We were connected at times but we made it really hard on ourselves with the ball, our settings, our errors ... they were in our faces.”

Tonga also benefited from some generous refereeing interpretations in the first half, as ruck inference and a suspected shoulder charge went unpunished but they thoroughly deserved their ascendancy.

The bright spot for the Kiwis was their second-half attack – with superb tries to Keano Kini, Phoenix Crossland and Joseph Tapine as the offence began to click, with the effort by Tapine one of the great four-pointers by a prop in Kiwis’ history.

But it wasn’t enough, as the Kiwis got a bit loose again at 24-24, after looking like they had all the momentum. So it came down to the wire and the Kiwis couldn’t respond after Katoa’s superb snap. Johnson was set but Kodi Nikorima threw an errant pass from dummy half before Isaako skewed his effort wide from the resultant charge down.

A Tongan defender (Eli Katoa) was nowhere near square at marker – before his desperate attempt to get to Johnson – but a Kiwis’ captain challenge was unsuccessful, for a controversial end to the game.

“I thought he got the call wrong,” explained Johnson. “I tried to challenge that; he wasn’t square at marker. And then they put it up on the big screen and they don’t even go back to the markers or the offside. They didn’t go back and look at it.”

Though a penalty would have been harsh on Tonga, it was a clear breach and hard to see how the bunker overlooked it.

But that summed up the night for the Kiwis, who will have to somehow regroup before facing either Papua New Guinea or Fiji next Sunday in Sydney in a promotion-relegation clash, to stay in the Pacific Championships’ top tier next year.

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission