Samoa Smash France And Look For More Football

Nov 10, 2008 League Freak World Cup News 0

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Samoa has easily beaten a very poor French team by a scoreline of 42-10.

The game marked Tony Puletua’s last game at Penrith Football Stadium as he captained the Samoan team to an easy win.

Samoa will have to wonder what might have been. They went from eying a place in the semi finals to having to settle for 9th place in the World Cup instead.

Samoan coach John Ackland has called for a four nations tournament to be formed featuring Samoa, Tonga PNG and an Australian A side. I personally think we might see a bit more then that, I think we’ll see both Tonga and Samoa getting regular games, possibly in a Four Nations competition with Australia, New Zealand and England.

As for France, after a great win over Scotland to start the tournament they fell away badly.

Its hard to know what went wrong, sure they had a few key injuries, but I have to say I was disappointed with how they turned up to the World Cup and surely John Monie has to take some of the blame for what has to be the worst French performance at a World Cup.

After the game Monie called for more French teams to be included in Super League, and while that will be a huge help, I think its time for the French federation to look at hiring a top of the line coach next time around.

We saw a few years ago when the United States had John Cartwright coaching them, a top class coach can make a massive difference to a teams performance.

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• France, John Ackland, John Cartwright, John Monie, Samoa, Tony Puletua, World Cup

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