Lelos Georgian rugby team head coach Milton Haig says despite the first three days of relaxing after a 42-hour flight, the pressure is still on with one more day until kickoff at Apia Park Stadium.
"We arrived very early in the morning on Saturday last week and then we relaxed from then through Sunday and a cross country road trip to the other side of the island just to relax a little bit more.It has just been fantastic," the former head coach for the Counties Manukau said.
Milton Haig and the Georgian team even took a special fishing trip out to Samoa’s coast and caught themselves a large yellow fin tuna. However, work soon started on Tuesday morning when Haig gathered his team for the conditioning ahead of the tough clash.
"We’ve sort of picked pretty well with the squad. We've been together for a quite a while. We have 21 of these players who have played in the World Cup so there's enough experience as we have a couple of young guys, couple of them who have been around this environment before, but haven’t quite played at this type of opportunity," Haig added.
"We know how hard it’s going to be because obviously Samoa is a very good side and we know what they can do during the World Cup they probably should have beaten Scotland and certainly could have had better results," he said.
"However, we certainly know them, we know who they are and we’re hoping the game itself, knowing Samoan fans are great people about rugby, but in general they would support rugby as a whole, and we're very excited for the match," he added.
With the game being at afternoon time, humidity has been said to play a big part of the match, but Haig says it won’t affect much.
"It’s about 30 degrees in Georgia right now as well and it’s only going to be the humidity that could affect our performance, but so far our players have adapted pretty well and again it’s all about making sure we prepare well and do our job and look for a good result on Saturday," Haig concluded.
Manu Samoa take on Georgia at Apia Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
Photo supplied: Georgia national team