It was the wake-up call they were not expecting and did not think they needed.<\/p>\n
But New Zealand Kiwi Ferns coach Ricky Henry wants his players to learn from the mistakes they made in their 18-12 victory over Fiji at McDonald Jones Stadium on Sunday and be better for the experience when they host France in Christchurch next Sunday.<\/p>\n
The Kiwi Ferns seemed to be on track for a comfortable first hit-out in the Women\u2019s Rugby League World Cup when winger Stacey Waaka scored in the second minute for a 4-0 lead.<\/p>\n
But New Zealand struggled to establish field position or dominate possession against some relentless Fijian defence and trailed 12-4 until Waaka\u2019s second try just before the break cut the deficit to 12-10.<\/p>\n
That remained the margin until Kiwi Ferns five-eighth Zahara Temara kicked two penalty goals late in the second half, then winger Leianne Tufuga scored three minutes from the end.<\/p>\n
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Temara with ice in the veins<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had a lot of ball, had a lot of possession, but they earned it as well, and the territory was definitely skewed one way,\u201d Henry said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we made 50 more tackles than them, so our petrol tank was down as well.\u00a0
\u201cBut again, I felt like we fought our way back, we found a way to get back into the game, and found a way to win the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll take that away, and obviously there\u2019s some things that we need to work on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Henry said the Kiwi Ferns drifted away from the way they wanted to play and had to do a better job of sticking to their game plan as they navigate the rest of the tournament.<\/p>\n
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The Kiwi Ferns lay down the challenge<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got some work to do when we get back to camp so you can put it a little bit down to being a bit rusty but it\u2019s not the excuse that we\u2019re using,\u201d Henry said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re a good team. There\u2019s a lot of NRLW players that are in there.\u00a0
\u201cIt might be Fiji and their first time in the World Cup, but they\u2019re a good team.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at their team, their halves are pretty steady, they\u2019ve got a bit of strike, and they play some ad-lib footy that\u2019s entertaining and can also ask a lot of questions about your team and your culture and your connection.\u201d<\/p>\n
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A beautiful Bulikula hymn<\/p>\n
Henry said he had only seen highlights of France\u2019s 58-4 loss to Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby last Saturday night but would spend the early part of this week reviewing that match and putting together their game plan.<\/p>\n
New Zealand co-captain Georgia Hale said they had concentrated on their own performance in the lead-up to the game and were not prepared for what Fiji presented.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were relentless, they kept coming, they played like they had nothing to lose, and they tested our waters for sure,\u201d Hale said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be fair, we didn\u2019t have the opportunity to really analyse what we were coming up against, but what we\u2019d done through the week in terms of our prep and our purpose and what we wanted to focus on, it was on us, and we went far away from our blueprint today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Kiwi Ferns, who won the first three Women\u2019s Rugby League World Cups, are seen as the clear second favourites behind Australia, who have won the past three.<\/p>\n
Hale had hoped to see her team make an early statement about their intentions to play physically and play smart but were lucky to escape with a win.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything was in our control, then we completely lost control,\u201d Hale said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very uncharacteristic in patches: doing someone else\u2019s job, ill-discipline, untidy play. What we wanted to achieve today was really basic \u2013 it was setting the tone of the tournament by being physical and going forward [but] we just went far away from that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not us, it\u2019s not the brand of footy that we want to play, and we had to work extremely hard on the back of that to try to make up for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just luck in the end. We definitely didn\u2019t work hard enough to flush it, forget it, and turn a corner to the direction we wanted to play.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was the wake-up call they were not expecting and did not think they needed. But New Zealand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":933094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-933093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933093","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=933093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/933094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}