Georgia aim to battle England up front

Georgia are ready for a battle royal up front when they clash with England in a Pool B encounter at Otago Stadium on Sunday.

By naming a five-two split in the substitutes, favouring forwards, Georgia coach Richie Dixon has made his intentions clear: he expects the Lelos to be competitive in the forwards and help erase the memory of their disappointing 15-6 loss to Scotland on Wednesday.
Just two changes have been made to the side that started against the Scots in Invercargill, with one newcomer on the bench.

Tighthead prop David Kubriashvili comes in for David Zirakashvili, while second row Ilia Zedginidze, who has 64 caps, gets his first chance at Rugby World Cup 2011, displacing 43-Test veteran Levan Datunashvili, who goes to the bench.

New to the bench is lock Givi Berishvili, who made his Test debut against Namibia in June.

Georgia's Scottish coach wants his team to remain consistent throughout and by utilising five forwards he hopes he has the arsenal to repel the powerful England pack.

'First-match syndrome'

“Any team playing at this level will have a good set of forwards," said Dixon. "We saw that against Scotland. It was not unexpected and we feel England will be every bit as strong.”

Dixon is working on the theory that consistency will play a major part in the game. “We have to maintain a certain level for both halves and restrict the impact of the England boys.”

Dixon said that "first-match syndrome" played a major part in Wednesday's loss, along with the inability of his normally reliable scrummagers to dominate against Scotland.

“We were all disappointed with our display," he said. “The guys were very disappointed they did not control themselves and (play) the way they would have wished.”

With no players injured, the quickness of the turnaround between Georgia's matches was not a major concern, Dixon said.

Case for the defence

And he believes the fact that Georgia kept Scotland tryless bodes well for Sunday's match.

“Our scrummaging was not as solid as it usually is and our lineout play was not as accurate as we normally expect and we hardly ever got into any attacking phase at all," Dixon said.

“The one thing that was obviously to our credit was our defence, which was very, very good. It had to be.

“We have to start to believe that we can play the way we train. Against Scotland we did not play, in terms of our attacking abilities, in the way that we had been training.”

Georgia's previous World Cup encounter with England was an 84-6 loss in 2003 and Dixon trusts that his team will not allow the English to establish that sort of ascendancy on Sunday.