Samoa coach Gordon Tietjens talks tactics. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Samoa men's sevens coach Sir Gordon Tietjens says his team have nothing to lose at the Commonwealth Games.
The Manu 7s are a lowly 12th on the World Series standings and have been plagued by injury this season, with Joe Perez, Tom Iosefo and Lafaele Va'a joining Gordon Langkilde and Darren Kellett on the sidelines.
Sir Gordon Tietjens said losing so much experience was tough but that presents an opportunity for others.
"They're big players who obviously you want to get up for the bigger tournaments but when that happens you've got to ask the young guys to start stepping up and I've got a lot of confidence in the players that I have in the squad, that if they can get out and play their very very best they can do very well," he said.
Samoa have been pitted in the toughest pool on the Gold Coast and will meet Australia, England and Jamaica at Robina Stadium today.
With only the pool winners advancing to the semi finals, Sir Gordon Tietjens is hoping his squad can build on their performances during last weekend's Hong Kong Sevens.
"The challenge I suppose will be for the teams like Australia, England, New Zealand that never took their top teams there and now they've got to start really well because it's a cut-throat pool."
"You can't afford to lose any games and of course we've got probably the toughest pool - Australia to start with - so it's an opportunity for us to have a crack at Australia. They've lost a couple of players through injury: both their captains, Lewis Holland and James Stannard, so they've got to regroup and look to play as a combination for the first time against us," he said.
"We've got nothing to lose - everything to gain really - but we know to beat them, to beat any one of those teams in our pool, we've got to play particularly well.'
"I want them to get out and express themselves: enjoy the atmosphere, enjoy the village, enjoy the experience and when it comes Saturday morning 9:30am to really turn it on against obviously a pretty buoyant crowd there supporting Australia, we realise that but I'm sure that we will also have a lot of support," he said.
