White eyes Ireland challenge after France defeat

Flying Fijians head coach Jake White will make the most of the six days available to prepare for Ireland.

His Fiji Water-sponsored side lost 54-17 to France in Lyon yesterday morning and will face Ireland at Aviva Stadium in Dublin on Sunday.

Speaking to ITV Sport Extra after the defeat, White said he was disappointed with the result.

“I think because I expected us to be a little bit more in the fight for longer. And I think you saw where we started. I thought, you know, we looked as though we were going to be in the fight,” White said.

“We just made a couple of mistakes. And I know it’s always like that, the same cliché, but you make mistakes against France, they punish you. And the one area, I mean, they scored a couple of more tries early on and that is one of the hardest things to coach in a small space of time.”

Fiji trailed 26-3 at half-time.

“I said to them at half-time, we mustn’t drop our heads. We didn’t give up fighting. We didn’t give up trying.

“So I’m at least proud of the boys who didn’t just lay down and die.” White expects another tough challenge against Ireland.

“I think we’re going to have to take a lot of what we did tonight (yesterday). We had to defend for long periods of time.

“I think Ireland are one team that will hold on to the ball for even longer, you know, in terms of the way they attack.

“I think, again, discipline was good tonight. We’ve been criticised a lot for giving a lot of penalties away. I think we gave two penalties away in the first half, which meant we stayed in the game. But there will be things obviously we’ll have to look at.”

He added: “Without making excuses, we were only together for a short space of time. And we’re going to try and put as much detail and as much effort in as we can.”

The former Springboks coach also praised his side’s adaptability.

“I think one thing Fiji have learnt over the years is we probably adapt more than anybody. You know, we never play at home.

“We always play away from home. You know, a lot of our players play overseas. We hardly have them together for long periods of time.

“And so the one thing they probably do learn is how to adapt quickly, you know, and made a late change. And, you know, I don’t think that’s the reason we struggled. I mean, at the end of the day, we made mistakes across the park.

“As I said, when France play well and they’re on top of you, especially early on in the game and they get a bit of a role in the crowd. I mean, they were phenomenal tonight. You could sense that you were playing against an extra person and they got behind the Fijian players when they scored tries.”

Captain Tevita Ikanivere said Fiji had started well but discipline had let them down.

“I think we started well. But our discipline let us down. We gave France an early start.

“We talked about not giving them a start, but I think our discipline let us down. We got a yellow card and then we were on the back foot. We’ll go back to the drawing board, see what mistakes we made and get better for next week.”

On finding a balance between Fiji’s attacking style and a more structured approach, Ikanivere said: “I think we’re looking for a balance – knowing where to do what.

“Today (yesterday) we talked about exiting our zone, but I think we played a bit too much. We made mistakes and France capitalised on it.

“But as I said, we’ll go back to the drawing board. We’ll try to get better for next week.”

Nations Championship fixtures

• • Fiji v Ireland — Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Sunday November 15: 8:10am.