Samoa recovered from their opening match 54-point hammering by hosts England to hand out a thrashing of their own, as they beat Greece 72-4. That means they head into their decider with France in Sheffield knowing that a win will take them through to the quarter-finals.
In Doncaster they put on a show that absolutely blew Greece away. Matt Parish was happy with the progress his side have made over the last few days and believes his side will keep on improving as the tournament progresses, given their lack of preparation time ahead of their opener.
“We played pretty well which is good and it's an improvement on last week which is what we hoped to do and we hope to improve further next week,” he said after the win. “We were always going to be a bit underdone in the first game, we didn’t have a friendly, we had all our guys arriving a week before the first game so we always thought we would get better as the tournament goes on. As I said, I think we will be better next week than we were this week.”
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The underdogs fought on bravely in the second half to get on the scoresheet, but this game was taken away from them in the first few minutes. Brian To’o got over in the first two minutes to put Greece ahead before Junior Paulo showed a great turn of pace to get onto a loose ball and ground the ball. After just four minutes, Samoa were 12-0 up.
Danny Levi then found himself in oceans of space to cross after 15 mins as Samoa went 16-0 up before Chanel Harris-Tavita shuffled his way past the Greek defence to extend the lead.
Royce Hunt flew through the middle of the weak defence to get his first try of the tournament before Jarome Luai did the exact same thing before the break to extend the lead. There was still time for more however as Tim Lafai shimmied his way brilliantly past two defenders to make it 42-0.
That’s how the two teams went in at the break and even though there was a clear gulf in the quality of the two teams, Greece deserve huge credit for how they continued to fight for every ball as we moved into the second half.
They got a reward for all their hard work with a try through Lachlan Illias. The ball was kicked over the top and the Samoan defence failed to deal with it, as the Greek halfback got the final touch to the ball to score for his country at the World Cup.
This wasn’t as enjoyable as their opener with France, as the game ran away from them, but their second half performance was an improvement, and that try was well deserved.
Samoa ran in several more tries as they asserted their dominance and got themselves on the board at this World Cup. Tim Lafai ended the game with another try even if Samoa were down a man after a yellow card. Having reached 42 by the break, it looked as if the favourites were going to hit 80+ points, and it is credit to the Greek defence that they managed to keep the second half score down, even when they were well beaten.
It was a performance for Samoa that was much more like it. They should fancy their chances against France next week, while Greece are in for another hammering at the hands of England.
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