Tietjens lauds 'special' team
Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:54
New Zealand coach Gordon Tietjens and his captain DJ Forbes both lauded their team for the "special effort" they produced in winning the Hong Kong tournament, Round Five in the International Rugby Board (IRB) Sevens World Series, on Sunday.
The Kiwis won their fifth tournament of the season, beating rivals South Africa 26-12 in the Final at Hong Kong. It was the Kiwis' first win in Hong Kong, the biggest event on the calendar, since 2001 - with Tietjens' side extending its record winning streak to 42 matches and seven tournament, taking into account the last two events of the previous season.
"I am very proud of them in putting all those games together and we did it pretty convincingly too," Tietjens said after Sunday's Final.
"We had a magnificent semifinal against Fiji and had a slow start against Wales in the quarters, but we topped it off with a good performance in the Final against South Africa.
"The physicality of my players in contact was outstanding and keeping the ball when we needed to and also scoring some good tries to go with it. You know it was a really good team performance.
"Hong Kong is special. It is not just about winning, look at all the people here and all the activities and it means a lot to us as do the 30 points for winning."
Sunday's victory saw New Zealand race into an almost unassailable lead at the top of the IRB Sevens standings. Their 110 points put them 38 clear of the second-placed South Africans, with just three rounds remaining.
Fiji are in third place, a further 10 points behind and for anybody to catch the Kiwis in the overall Series challenge, it would require the New Zealanders getting virtually no points in the remaining tournaments and their rivals winning all three events.
However, Tietjens dismissed any notion of complacency.
"It is never done and dusted," he said of his team's charge towards another IRB Series title - having won seven of the eight IRB Series titles to date, with Fiji (2005/06) the only other team to taste glory.
"We still have three tournaments to go [in the 2007/08 season]. We want to do well at Adelaide [next week], which is important for us."
He was also full of praise for his captain.
"DJ Forbes leads from the front and he is ruthless in the contact areas and is just a great leader who inspires the players. He is a different kind of captain to Messam or Rush, but he is a special captain.
"We need to go to Adelaide and look no further than our pool games and get that consistency and then we will kick on from there."
Forbes also had nothing but praise for his team.
"It is special to us and we have made a bit of history which is something that the boys can be proud of," he said of his team's Hong Kong title and 42-match unbeaten run.
"We want to be a team that is remembered and hopefully we have done that. I cannot say enough about the boys, we have done a lot of hard work this year, put a few things together and we are unbeaten.
"Seven tournaments in a row is pretty special and five this year is something that will go down in the record books but we still want to finish strong and perform in Adelaide.
"The only thing that is going to stop us is ourselves and our errors. We pride ourselves on our defence. Out of the six matches we limited each side to a max of two tries per match, so we are proud of that. Gordon [Tietjens] has been in the game for 14 years, while this is the first season for the majority of us, so the experience makes a real difference.
"You have to be confident going into finals games. It is all about pressure and we have certainly taken things forward. We have done seven in a row, so why can't we go all the way?"
