New Zealand “slipped off a bit” in a 26-0 win over Tonga said captain DJ Forbes

by Brendan Bradford on the Gold Coast –

New Zealand will start the knock-out stages of the Gold Coast Sevens high on confidence after going through the group stages without conceding a single point.

The defending Series champions accounted for the USA 38-0, Tonga 26-0 and Kenya 31-0 to top Pool A and set up a Cup quarter-final with Samoa who finished second to Australia in Pool D. Renowned for their incredible attacking prowess, captain DJ Forbes says keeping sides scoreless is something of a badge of honour for New Zealand.

“A couple of years ago we used to pride ourselves on not letting teams cross our line, especially on day one because you obviously really want to knuckle down on the finer things,” he said.

“On day two, it doesn’t matter how pretty it is, a win’s a win.”

Ominously for opposition teams is the New Zealand captain’s assessment that his side “slipped off a bit” in the 28-0 win over Tonga before “finishing strong against a pretty awesome Kenyan side.”

“People may think that those games might have looked a bit easy, but they’re definitely not like that. We went through a lot of things, put our game-plan in place and whoever we play tomorrow, we’ll have a few things up our sleeves which will hopefully put us in good stead.”

Cup Quarter-Final Draw for Day Two

With an attack orchestrated by the ageless Tomasi Cama and spearheaded by rampant performances from Joe Webber and Tim Mikkelson, Forbes says nothing will change for New Zealand as they head into the crunch end of the tournament.

“We’ve just gotta keep in the back of our minds that finals footy is different, and the teams playing us will lift to another level,” he said.

“The skillset remains the same – making our tackles, getting the gain line, getting in behind teams and putting pressure on – that will definitely stay the same, but depending on who we face and what they bring to the table, we’ll have to do our analysis.”

Their opponents, Samoa, were solid if unimpressive in wins over Argentina (24-7) and Scotland (19-12) before falling 12-0 to Australia in the last match of day one. A relatively inexperienced team made up entirely of local players, Samoa won the Oceania Championships in Fiji last weekend and finished the 2012/13 season in fourth place.

The match kicks off at 11:58am QLD time.