A Message To all Supporters of the Manu Samoa from Michael Jones August 30th 2007


"Fa'atalofa atu to all our supporters, on behalf of the Manu Samoa players and management we wish to extend a big fa'afetai lava to you all for your support, thoughts and prayers for your team

Our preparations are going extremely well.

We are based at an excellent facility, Loughborough University, 20 minutes out of Leicester (the Tuilagi brothers other home base outside Safotulafai), it is actually where England were based prior to winning the RWC in 2003, The team has come together very well, training well and especially over the last 2 games playing very well.

We have been using these games to firstly get much needed match fitness (1 game is worth 10 trainings), look at combinations and selections for the game vs South Africa, and work on our basics without giving too much away (South Africa and England have sent coaches to all our warm up games).

Our results against 3 very good English club teams have been all in all great hit outs. We have not been to focused on the scores but more importantly what we could gain from these games in terms of shaping the team and the players.

Beating Sale 27-7 has definitely been a great platform to launch into the World Cup with a lot of self confidence and belief. The boys played a very physical and discplined game. The exciting thing is knowing we can improve a great deal by the time we get to Paris.

Unfortunately we have sustained 1 tour ending injury, Donald Kerslake (broken ribs) and potentially another in Filipo Levi (fractured eye socket). This is the reality and danger of playing warm up games but we always knew that there would be a risk of losing 1 or 2 players. We will miss Donald as he is one of our most improved players over the last 2 years and a model player, on and off the field. We wish him a speedy recovery and are confident he will be back bigger and better for this character building experience.

We are due in Paris by the end of this week and the team is very excited. It is more a matter of holding them back a bit as they are hungry for a great showing against the Springboks.

We will continue to pay whatever price it takes to bring success for Samoa, our families and our people.

We know we face some big "Giants" over the next few weeks but we definitely do not see a giant but an opportunity.

Ia manuia lava

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