Western Force coach Simon Cron has hailed the gains made during the four-game Toyota Challenge which concluded with Saturday’s 32-22 loss to the Cheetahs but says his players must “learn from it”.
The South African Currie Cup winners closed out a 3-1 series win with Saturday’s victory at Claremont’s Revo Fitness Stadium in front of approximately 1,800 fans.
The Force had won Game 3 in Mandurah 30-27, after the Cheetahs triumphed in both games in late August and early September in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
The squad will now enter a four-week break, before returning in November for pre-season to build up towards the 2024 Super Rugby Pacific campaign that commences in February.
“Win or lose, you’ve got to learn,” Cron said following Saturday’s defeat. “The biggest thing about this game is it’s pointless unless we learn from it.
“Some things around game management, in that first 10 minutes we over-played, tried to offload and gave the ball back to them too easily. We’re trying to score first phase, second phase, rather than building some pressure. We’ve got to just cool our jets a bit and stick to the plan.
“We’re like a 14-year-old at a disco, we’re trying to run around doing everything and we don’t want that.”
Prior to the series, Cron had spoken about the importance of the Toyota Challenge for developing players and their cohesion as a team, along with the wider squad depth.
Reflecting afterwards, Cron was upbeat about the benefits from the series that included a 10-week block of training and games for the squad which had concluded their 2023 Super Rugby Pacific season in June.
“Playing at this time is critical to us,” he said. “We want to be playing, we want to be playing now. It’s an opportunity for our boys during this time.
“We’ve had a 10-week block. We had four weeks before we went to South Africa, then we had two games in two weeks, then another four weeks again, so there’s 10 weeks where our players were together working on what they need to work on to get better and growing the depth for our Super Rugby squad.
“I think we played 17 new guys (across the series). That gives us an opportunity to have learned a lot about them over the period.
“Today three guys got their first time on the field, Titi (Nofogatotoa), Reagan (Leslie) and Berty (Albert Alcock) got on. Bids (Rewita Biddle) played as well. They’re guys that might in the future have opportunities with the Force.”
When asked about Game 4 specifically, Cron was frustrated by his side’s skill errors but enthused they were in a position to win entering the final 10 minutes after Tom Horton’s try made it 29-22.
“The score probably doesn’t reflect the game, it should’ve maybe been a bit more than that,” he said. “We lost eight lineouts of our own, four scrums, offloads, some skillset stuff that we did today that really kept that game in control of the Cheetahs. Key things for us to work on in Super Rugby.
“We put ourselves in a position to win. Eight minutes to go, within seven points, that’s winning territory which is a bit of a surprise. But then ball carry, turn on the side, clean from the side and penalty, they’re another three in front.
“It’s a constant work-on for us around that skill stuff. That’s the whole reason for the series.”
The Cheetahs scored two of their four tries on Saturday from rolling mauls, having previously had success with that strategy earlier in the series.
“We’re going to have to spend a lot of time in pre-season on our mauling both in attack and defence to give our boys more confidence in that zone,” Cron said. “Little things like body height, leg drive.”
Despite the series being on the line, the Force fell behind 21-3 in the first half as the Cheetahs scored tries from Jeandre Rudolph and two from Marnus van der Merwe, before rallying back with tries from Harry Potter, Rewita Biddle and Horton.
“You could definitely see a little bit of tension in them (early),” Cron said. “We’d make a line break and we were a little bit slow on the breakdown. They probably went in their shells a little bit when they lost the first couple of lineouts.
“If you look at the game, we actually started well, we got down on their line. But then we lost that lineout, lost the next lineout and it just culminates in the inability to build pressure.”
The Force open their 2024 Super Rugby Pacific season on Friday 23 February 7pm against the Hurricanes at HBF Park. Memberships are on sale now.
