{"id":247495,"date":"2025-10-29T00:41:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T00:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/247495\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T00:41:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T00:41:11","slug":"embarrassed-kaufusi-vows-tonga-will-bounce-back-against-kiwis-nrl-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/247495\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cEmbarrassed\u201d: Kaufusi vows Tonga will bounce back against Kiwis – NRL News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tonga<\/a> forward Felise Kaufusi<\/a> has promised a stronger performance this weekend, admitting the team felt \u201cembarrassed\u201d after their 34-6 defeat to Samoa<\/a> in Brisbane.<\/p>\n

The loss leaves Tonga<\/a> needing to beat New Zealand<\/a> by at least 18 points at Eden Park to have any chance of reaching the Pacific Cup final and earning a rematch with their Pacific rivals.<\/p>\n

\u201c[I feel] kind of embarrassed to be honest; we had such a great build-up to our campaign and wanted to put it out there, but we were a bit rusty, bit off the pace and obviously didn’t help ourselves with our errors,\u201d Kaufusi told nrl.com.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe weren’t executing and our discipline\u2026 you can’t afford to do that at this level.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe club level you can get away with it, but definitely internationals, and against a team like Samoa<\/a>, they were on tonight and it showed.<\/p>\n

\u201cLuckily, we get a chance against New Zealand<\/a> and we’ll take some lessons from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NewAUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND – NOVEMBER 02: Siua Wong of Tonga charges forward during the men’s 2024 Rugby League Pacific Championship match between New Zealand Kiwis and Tonga XIII at Go Media Stadium on November 02, 2024 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Hannah Peters\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

He outlined the game plan needed to defeat the Kiwis, admitting his side must be better in their next showing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to start fast, start hard and be a lot more disciplined and execute a lot more, but I think we’ll be better for having that run,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Tonga<\/a> were without star forward Jason Taumalolo<\/a>, who was ruled out on the eve of the match to continue his recovery from surgery, while prop Stefano Utoikamanu<\/a> exited early with a head knock.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s probably one of our biggest strengths, being aggressive, being a good pack and leading off that, and we obviously didn’t do that [against Samoa<\/a>{,\u201d Kaufusi said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a good challenge for us that we come up another against another great pack in New Zealand<\/a> and it’ll be another big one.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously losing Jase\u2026 you know what difference he makes in that red jersey and with Stef, it was just unfortunate, and we lost him so early as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know he was keen for a big game\u2026 [Byt] that’s just part of the game nowadays that we’ve got to prepare for and be ready for.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tino's<\/p>\n

Kaufusi hopes Tonga’s passionate supporters will again turn out in numbers for Sunday’s clash.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely we want to see the \u2018red sea’ again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know they’ll be out in their droves, with their parades, cars, their flags.<\/p>\n

\u201cWin, lose or draw, I know they’ll be there, so I can’t wait to see [them in] New Zealand<\/a> again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Tongan squad will get the chance at redemption this weekend against the Kiwis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tonga forward Felise Kaufusi has promised a stronger performance this weekend, admitting the team felt \u201cembarrassed\u201d after their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-247495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}