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Samoa are unhappy with their November Internationals fixtures. The Pacific Islanders play on November 10, 17, and 24 with Head Coach Steve Jackson making it clear that the tour is not what he desires.
“We don’t want to be playing tier two teams, but that’s just the reality of the situation we’re in at the moment.”
Jackson is the recently appointed Head Coach and made his comment with an eye to RWC 2019. Samoa will play in Pool A of the Japan hosted tournament. Their tournament will begin against Russia on Tuesday October 24 in Kumagaya.
For the Russians the match will be game two. The Bears are to open the tournament against Japan four days earlier. The backing-up required will ask a lot of the qualifiers from Europe.
Samoa are to also have challenging fixtures with their second game falling six days after their first. The game against Scotland in Kobe will be followed by four rest days before facing Japan in Toyota. From there Samoa will have a full week, or six rest days, before facing Ireland in Fukuoka.
It is a far from ideal schedule involving a lot of traveling and not as many rest days as others. Like Russia Uruguay will be playing their two least challenging fixtures back-to-back and are to also have just three rest days in between.
Jackson’s unhappiness with Samoa’s November Internationals comes despite Samoa being ranked 16th in the world, below both Georgia and the USA. In addition the tour itself is to be Samoa’s second trip to Europe this year, the first being a RWC Qualifying Play-Off vs Germany.
Samoa were unable to qualify as Oceania 1 or 2 with Fiji and Tonga performing better to claim the spots. Yet the prize for Samoa at the tournament was an easier pool than their Pacific Islands neighbors.
The inability to qualify earlier is a reflection of Samoa’s current standings in the sport. The World Rankings further reflect this, bringing into question the seriousness of Jackson’s criticism of the November tour.
As evidenced in the home-and-away matches against Germany in 2018 Samoa are a far from being the team which played so well against Scotland in their RWC 2015 pool match in Newcastle. In the same tournament Samoa were badly beaten by South Africa and Japan, the latter having fallen 35-24 away to Georgia 10 months before RWC 2015.
Samoa’s match against Georgia next month will be the 4th test between the countries. The first fixture saw Samoa winning 46-9 in Australia during RWC 2003. Those days, however, are long gone with Georgia being an entirely different opponent today. Combined with Samoa also not being the force of the past it makes the Lelos favorites going into their match on November 17.
This is furthered when considering the results since 2003. On November 23 2003 Samoa lost 16-15 to Georgia in Tbilisi. This was a week after Georgia were beaten 25-23 by the USA also in Tbilisi. In 2016 Georgia won 20-16 again at home and the teams competed to a 16-16 draw in Apia, Samoa that same year.
