Opinion
We know we’re the villains in the World Cup final this weekend and pretty much everyone in the stadium will want to see us lose but that’s just all part of the World Cup experience on foreign soil.
The Kangaroos will get a taste of what it’s like to be NSW when they play against Queensland at Suncorp Stadium at Origin time when we go to Old Trafford.
All the locals I’ve spoken to over here are going for Samoa so I don’t think too many of the neutral supporters will be cheering us on.
We didn’t have the crowd on our side last weekend against the Kiwis and we think the Samoans will play a similar style to them with a bit more unpredictability and unorthodox tactics thrown into the mix.
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The final will be like Origin too in that there’ll be a lot of NRL club teammates on opposite sides. We had a taste of that last weekend against New Zealand but you saw with Liam Martin and James Fisher-Harris standing up to each other that all friendships were put aside and then they were back to being mates again after full-time.
(Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images for RLWC)
We’ve got a lot of Panthers boys coming up against their mates this weekend, Joseph Suaalii will be fullback for Samoa so James Tedesco and Angus Crichton will be looking to get one over him, Reagan Campbell-Gillard and Junior Paulo are front-row partners at Parramatta but that won’t stop them from going at each other hammer and tongs.
The mate against mate mantra was what Origin was built on and it’s one of the many reasons why it’s been so successful for such a long time.
Last weekend’s win by only two points was our first true Test match contest of the tournament and the criticism of our playmakers Nathan Cleary and Cameron Munster has been wide of the mark.
It was a forwards game and that’s where it was won and lost on both sides.
They tried to bash us through the middle third and our forwards stood up to them. I thought Angus Crichton was excellent, Liam Martin was players’ player and Isaah Yeo was strong as always.
Our three back-rowers were all around the 40 tackles mark and played the full 80 minutes, which was crucial for us because it was a grind.
(Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images for RLWC)
It’s not the flash stuff that wins you Tests. We weren’t trying to finesse our way through it, this one was a field position game and I thought our second half was much more controlled with a good kicking game.
New Zealand had a couple of chances to get the win over us last weekend but they didn’t quite nail them and that’s Test footy at the highest level – if you don’t ice those moments it can cost you.
Samoa were outstanding in their win over England and if we don’t respect them and the ball, they could definitely beat us.
They were underdogs too the previous week against Tonga but from where they started the tournament with that 60-6 flogging at the hands of England, they’ve clearly been the big improvers and deserve to be there in the final.
They’re playing as a team with momentum on their side and they’re not afraid to chance their arm, which makes them even more dangerous.
The try they scored where Jarome Luai made the offload to Junior Paulo and the ball got flicked back to him and they scored was one of the best of the World Cup.
(Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images for RLWC)
We still think our best performance is still to come and that’s what we’ve been building towards.
We’ve played well in patches but haven’t had that strong 80-minute Kangaroos performance as yet. That’s the challenge for us.
I don’t think we’ve quite nailed that fluency in attack that we want because it’s still a pretty new spine combination between Cleary, Munster, James Tedesco at fullback and Ben Hunt or Harry Grant at hooker.
We didn’t really put the Kiwis under too much pressure when we had the ball on their line in three or four sets, coughing up the ball or not coming up with the right option.
They’re learning how to play together and they’re all quite engaged with getting it right.
We’re being very respectful around Samoa being in the final and what it means for the game but we have a mission that we came a long way to achieve.
It’s been a long year for some of the players with club footy, finals, plus Origin and now a World Cup but they don’t seem fatigued.
I think it’s one of the advantages of having a pretty young squad with a tournament like this being a new occasion for them.
If we had an older team with players who had 20-odd Tests under their belt they may not have that extra enthusiasm that we seem to have in camp.
It helps when you have characters like Josh Addo-Carr around.
He continued his amazing try-scoring efforts against the Kiwis when he scored off the bomb that went over the back of Jordan Rapana.
We asked him about it afterwards and he said it was only halfway through as he was chasing that he thought “I’m a chance to get this on the full”.
Only he could say something like that but it shows his level of confidence right now, what a natural, instinctive player he is and everything he’s touching is turning to gold on this tour.
The tournament as a whole has been a great experience for everyone involved and it’s important for the sport.
We’ve got another World Cup in three years time in France and hopefully we can keep building the game between now and then, particularly with more competition between the top five or six nations with the others also playing more often to help bridge the gap.
Mal Meninga and I were talking to Michael Maguire after the game and he’s desperate for New Zealand to get more Test matches under their belt against us, England and the stronger Pacific nations.
More resources need to be put into Tonga, Samoa and Papua New Guinea to ensure they can remain competitive – you can see the benefits in the past decade or so from when they’ve had coaches and off-field staff with NRL experience come into their program.
It’s tough for the schedulers with the NRL now up to 17 teams, three byes, Origin and talk about a pre-season, I don’t know how they fit it all in because it can be a logistical nightmare.
COVID-19 changed the landscape with the roll-out of international games over the span of each World Cup but now is the time to sort out what that looks like for the next few years.
Michael Hagan is a former dual-premiership winning first grade player and current assistant coach of Australia's Kangaroos team. Hagan played 183 games for Canterbury and Newcastle and represented Queensland five times. He transitioned into a successful coach and took the Knights to a premiership in his first year in charge back in 2001. He went onto coach 205 NRL games and six times for Queensland in Origin.
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