Moana Pasifika captain Sekope Kepu … “I was very proud of the lads, the way they fronted up.” Image: RNZ\/Photosport<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nMoana Pasifika had their first two matches postponed after a covid outbreak within the squad.<\/p>\n
The Moana Pasifika captain Sekope Kepu said his side played with passion and would have made their families proud in their Super Rugby debut.<\/p>\n
“I was very proud of the lads, the way they fronted up,” hde said.<\/p>\n
“The Crusaders are a team that can punish you but I thought we kept coming back and keep showing up for each other and spoke about it all week, being courageous as a group, and doing it for our families and our people and I thought we showed that.”<\/p>\n
Moana Pasifika coach Aaron Mauger said he felt the Moana Pasifika forwards did outstanding work.<\/p>\n
“Credit is has got to go to Filo and Puleasi for the work they have done with the guys and for the guys out there who are just fronting up and executing their roles, it was really impressive.<\/p>\n
“When we got the ball, making sure we were really clinical with it. I think they had 28 percent for most of that first half, so it was actually hard to build pressure with our attack, we had some plans to do that but like you say…we spent most of the time defending.<\/p>\n
“It’s certainly an area we want to focus on, it’s clearly the Crusader’s plan to try and gas us. They knew we had been locked up for 12 days, we’ve only had three intensity trainings since we come out and just try and manage our work loads and on the back of that.<\/p>\n
“It was a pretty outstanding performance, and Sekope used that word courageous before, I thought it was really courageous.”<\/p>\n
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RNZ Pacific The Fijian Drua have made history, defeating the Melbourne Rebels 31-26 in Queensland for their first-ever Super Rugby win last night, and Moana Pasifika lost their debut match 33-12 against the Crusaders in Dunedin but still impressed. The tournament newcomers Drua went into Friday night\u2019s match as underdogs following heavy defeats to the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":400,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44751,5,495,44752,7,44753,35767,255,12,44754,368,21539,611,124,35768,888,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/400"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540970"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":543066,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540970\/revisions\/543066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}