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Message for Force: Lift skills, cut the errors
Nick Taylor - The West Australian on March 24, 2016, 12:41 am
Western Force captain Matt Hodgson says players must take responsibility for their mistakes and lift their skill levels as they head into Saturday night’s Super Rugby clash with the Chiefs in Hamilton.
Their endurance faces another examination in the second of their three-game tour of New Zealand.
The Force are in a crucial period with only one win in four games and need to re-start their campaign after last Saturday’s 41-6 defeat by the Hurricanes.
Despite the disappointment of the loss in Palmerston North, Hodgson said the side could return to winning ways.
“We are obviously disappointed with the way we have let things slip but we can bounce back,” Hodgson said.
“We’ve had a good review and some solid sessions and we will get better.
“We have plans to score, we just have to execute them. We have to lift our energy levels and work even harder in that area.
“You can see how the game plan is working to create opportunities but it is coming down to individual skill errors at crucial times in crucial areas of the field. When we get into those scoring opportunities we have to take them because you may only get one or two chances in a game.
“We are creating opportunities, the frustrating thing is we are not converting them into points. The options are right. It’s our execution and skill error rate.
“We have to be harder individually on ourselves to make sure we don’t give the ball away.
“It is an area of our game we have been working hard on during training.”
Hodgson said the team had to be smarter at the breakdown and not commit too many players into the ruck. “The Chiefs are like the Hurricanes and will pick certain rucks to compete in,” he said.
“We have to be smarter about how many people we throw into the breakdown and what we are doing at the breakdown to make sure they have to commit.
“We have to control the breakdown, look at the numbers we go in with and commit the opposition. At times against the Hurricanes there were too many people in the line and that was down to how we were playing.”
Chiefs prop Pauliasi Manu is out for the season after tearing his Achilles at training in Hamilton yesterday. The 28-year-old was preparing for his 50th match. Atu Moli appears likely to come on to the bench.
But captain Sam Cane will lead the Chiefs after he was cleared of a dangerous tackle that forced Jaguars prop Nahuel Tetaz Chaparro from the field last week in Argentina.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/sp...t-lift-skills/
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