26 Oct 2015

Sport: Samoa says Rugby World Cup review will be thorough

11:44 am on 26 October 2015

The Samoa Rugby Union says the review of its World Cup campaign will be all-encompassing.

The Manu failed to reach the knockout rounds after losses to South Africa, Japan and Scotland in pool play and head coach Stephen Betham has confirmed he will not seek reappointment.

Manu Samoa players thank the crowd after beating USA at the Rugby World Cup.

Manu Samoa players thank the crowd after beating USA at the Rugby World Cup. Photo: AFP

The Chief Executive Officer of the SRU, Faleomavaega Vincent Fepuleai, says a full independent review will be undertaken to determine why Manu Samoa failed to perform to expectations at the World Cup.

"We've gone back right down to the drawing board and look at ourselves internally at the rugby union administration side of things through our reforms we are looking at the whole issue of how we run our competitions and so forth, because at the moment there are so many changes in terms of the professional era and I think our competitions haven't been all that great over the years. We need to look internally at how we can upskill our local players. We seem to have lost our Samoan flair because of the so many players from all over the world playing for us. We need to upskill our players to make sure that the Samoan flair remains and that is reflected at Manu Samoa level".

SRU board member and the President of Oceania Rugby, Lefau Harry Schuster, has called for only locally based players to be selected for future Manu Samoa squads.

Faleomavaega says it has always been the SRU's view that local players should provide the bulk of the national team, although he accepts big improvements need to be made before that is possible.

"That will never happen if we are restricted to playing international matches with tier one nations and at the same time not having a strong competition internally. Our view is that only key positions we were looking at selecting from overseas but unfortunately at this point in time we just haven't got the players on island and that's reflected in the competitions that we have in Samoa at the moment but we're looking at changing that. It always has been the view of the Union that the majority of the team should be from Samoa to be competitive but it's difficult, it's all very well saying that but if we don't have a competition to expose our players to play at a higher level then we will always be struggling".

Faleomavaega says the SRU is also continuing to implement governance, management and financial reforms following talks with World Rugby earlier this year.