Western Force Coach Simon Cron is not making any excuses for his side’s 31-13 loss to the Fijian Drua at a drenched Churchill Park over the weekend.
Critics had suggested the game be postponed due to the adverse weather, but the Force maintained that the conditions were not the reason for their loss.
The game started promisingly for the Force, with Tom Horton scoring early but they quickly fell behind as the Drua took an 18-5 lead.
Despite the weather challenges, Cron said the team’s failure to stick to their game plan as the main issue.
“Not the result we wanted,” Cron admitted post-game, pointing out the team had prepared for the wet conditions given the continuous rain in the Lautoka for weeks.
“We had a plan around that, we just didn’t execute that plan very well,”
“We had enough opportunities in that game to put a lot of pressure on. And probably alleviated the pressure with the errors or the penalties,” he said.
Cron further criticized his team’s inability to capitalize on the Drua’s red card on Tevita Ikanivere,
“When they had the red card, we didn’t capitalize,”
“We created some opportunities but the reason they were able to get inside our 22 was our own errors, like their kickoff and one of our players puts his hand down to try and stop it when he needed to use his leg in the wet,” Cron added.
