New Zealand superstar Joseph Manu stepped up when it mattered for the Kiwis in their close quarter final match, picking up another player of the match award in the process, his second for the tournament.
The hard-fought, come-from-behind win against Fiji Bati saw New Zealand progress to next week’s semi-final at Leeds, where arch rivals Australia will be waiting.
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Manu knows the upcoming challenge ahead better than most, but was looking forward to testing himself against his current and former Sydney Roosters team-mates including Kangaroos skipper James Tedesco and the destructive Latrell Mitchell.
“I’m excited, they are the games that you look forward to as a player, going up against some of the best,” Manu said.
“Excited to play some of them, but excited to see what we can do as a team, we are focused on ourselves, we will be ready. But we have a few things that we want to work on, so we are more focused on ourselves.
“James is obviously a great player, I have played with him for a few years now and he’s got that fullback position at the Roosters, so whenever I tend to start in there, he tends to help me out a bit, he’s someone I love to learn from.
“But we will be on opposite sides next week and he’s a good mate, but I want to do what’s best for our team and I will be competing against him on Friday night.”
Tedesco allays injury fears
Kiwi coach Michael Maguire – who prior to the tournament kicking off challenged Manu to be “the best fullback in the tournament” was full of praise for his star following the game which New Zealand trailed up until the 71st minute, only gaining the lead thanks to Jordan Rapana’s successful penalty goal, saying his involvement helped turn the game in his team’s favour.
“He’s going good, he did a great job for us tonight ... Joey is learning a little bit about the players around him too, so there’s times there where Joey is such a good support player through the middle, being able to get out to an edge and be part of that sort of play as well is something that has been growing.”
Maguire also said he would not be tempted to move Manu to his regular club position of centre for the clash with the Kangaroos, trusting his squad to be able to match it against Australia’s lethal left edge containing Mitchell and the tournament’s current leading try scorer Josh Addo-Carr.
“Not at all, he’s doing a great job for us up the back, what he did tonight got us out of trouble quite a bit, so we will leave him there,” Maguire said.
“But we will be right; we’ll just get our forwards up and going and make sure that they do their role as much as they can and that will help out that edge.”
Manu makes a big difference
As well as scoring tries and making metres – 348 for this game – Manu also made a game turning captain’s challenge, crucially earning back possession after the video referee agreed that he had been illegally stripped of the ball by Fiji after the original on-field ruling of knock on had given the Bati the ball back.
“Just hoping it came off,” Manu told media of how confident he was of the call. “I was not too sure, I sort of felt a strip, but there was only a little bit of time left I think and why not have a shot, and it ended up working in our favour.”
Following the match, both Manu and Maguire conceded there was room for improvement before the semi-final against Australia, but were confident about their chances.
“We will improve. One thing about the group, they are pretty strong on how they want to go about things and we had a discussion just then about what we did tonight, and we will take that into this week,” Maguire said.
“We can’t give away cheap, loose, ball with our errors or penalties; I thought at the start of the game we gave away a couple of penalties and the pressure came on and we haven’t handled that as well as we have in the past, which are good lessons for us leading into next week.
“But we are in the semi now and that’s the main thing and that’s what we have spoken about. We’ve got a shot at going through to the big game, so we have just got to put our heads down and have a really good week together like we have been and get our performance right.”