With his side still capable of qualifying for the knockout stages of the World Cup Milton Haig, the New Zealander who coaches Georgia, could be seen as throwing in the towel ahead of their meeting with his compatriots in Cardiff tonight.
If he had elements of the Scottish media on his case he could, on the basis of what happened eight years ago, anticipate having to fend off all sorts of ridicule and criticism or even accusations that he is somehow bringing the tournament into disrepute.
He is not, however and common sense will prevail among those soberly assessing the logic behind his decision to make the changes he has to a side that went unchanged into its two previous matches which he considered winnable.
In the case of the meeting with Tonga he was proven right. A few days later against Argentina it was a different matter.
However Haig is a man who knows what represents a realistic goal at this stage in his team’s development and, particularly after Argentina re-asserted themselves as the second strongest team in the pool, he remains fully focused upon that.
“We’ve been pretty vocal about what our ultimate goal is at this tournament,” Haig. “We’ve got five days after the All Blacks game before we play Namibia which is very important to achieve our goal of qualifying for 2019, so it’s a necessary evil that our focus is on the Namibia game.”
“Some of the senior guys knew they wouldn’t get on for this match. There’s a few disappointed guys obviously, but we said three or four months ago that we all have a common goal and everybody agreed to this. They don’t like it obviously, but it goes with the territory.”
That said he believes the strength in depth that the Georgians have been working on developing is reflected since there is considerable experience among those brought into the side, to the extent that this will be the most capped Georgian side ever to play a Test match.
“We don’t think there’s a heck of a lot of difference between the guys that we stuck out against Tonga or Argentina and New Zealand. We’ve worked pretty hard in the last four years to make sure we’ve created depth and competition for positions,” Haig noted.
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