Roelof Kotze is urging his UAE Under-20 team to cut out the mistakes ahead of this weekend’s second leg of the Asia Rugby Under-20 Sevens Series in Hong Kong.
The South African is adamant his side are not a million miles away from beating the top sides in Asia in their age group, but insists his team have got to focus for the entire matches in order to be in contention for medals.
The UAE finished seventh out of eight teams in leg one of this year’s Series in Johor last weekend, losing four and winning two of their matches.
Despite heavy defeats to hosts Malaysia (28-5), Sri Lanka (33-7) and Thailand (26-7), the UAE were well in contention at half-time in all three matches and the national team’s performance manager believes remaining focused throughout the entire game is his side’s biggest problem.
“We played some really nice rugby but it was small mistakes again,” lamented the 45-year-old.
“We lost our focus and mistakes cost us games. We always started well in the first half but it was the second half we would lose our focus.
“Staying focused throughout the whole game is our biggest problem. We have to keep working hard for the whole game, that’s what we need to do.
“At half-time against both Sri Lanka and Malaysia we were drawing 7-7. It was the same score against Thailand or we could have even been leading. We need to transfer what we do there into the second half.”
Kotze has started to address the issue this week by increasing training intervals, instead working for 10 minutes and having a break instead of the five or six minute intervals employed previously.
“We’re working on key areas where mistakes were made, defensively we’re working hard,” he said.
“The boys can see that when we do things right it looks pretty easy.”
Although he was disappointed with falling short of at least a fourth place finish he had coveted, Kotze admitted there were also plenty of positives from the first leg.
– UAE: U20s finish distant seventh at disappointing Asia Rugby Sevens
– From Chris Henry to Quade Cooper: Rugby World Cup watch
– From Burgess to Farrell: Winners & losers from England's victory
– NZ: New knighthood offer for Richie McCaw, says New Zealand PM
They recorded two wins over Kazakhstan, while their second defeat on the opening day was a narrow 19-17 loss to Singapore, which came when two UAE players had been sin-binned.
“We’re fine-tuning our attack because on that front we did very well,” he said.
“We scored some very nice tries and when we had the ball it was all very good. We made some of the top sides look ordinary when we had the ball.”
The UAE land in Hong Kong on Wednesday although the pools for the tournament have not yet been drawn up.
Kotze has slightly reshuffled his pack. Abu Dhabi Harlequins’ Iziq Foa’i stays with the squad while Ebrahim Doraee has returned to the UAE, replaced by Hamad Al Shkeili.
