The Papua New Guinea Orchids are refusing to bow their heads following a challenging defeat against a polished Fijian Bulikula side, choosing instead to view the heavy loss as a vital learning curve for an evolving international squad.
Speaking after the match, the Orchids coach admitted that the foundation of the match slipped away in the opening forty minutes due to unforced errors, cheap possession, and mounting defensive pressure against an elite, world-class opposition.
“We obviously lost the game in the first half, we gave away too much cheap positioning at one end, but they capitalise, they’ve got world-class players,” the coach said. “What we needed to do to compete harder today was to complete our sets, which we didn’t do.”
Despite the lopsided scoreline, the coaching staff praised the defensive resilience shown by the team under heavy repeat sets, noting that Fiji’s experienced roster applied relentless pressure throughout the contest.
With a relatively inexperienced spine managing the game, the Orchids leadership noted that high-level international rugby league exposes small mental and technical errors quickly. Moving forward, investing in the development of key positions, specifically fullback, five-eighth, halfback, and hooker, will be critical over the next 12 months.
“Our spine is a rookie spine, they’re just learning the game,” the coach explained. “They’re really, really inexperienced players and they’re competing at the highest level possible. So, we probably couldn’t get our plays on that we trained for, which is disappointing, but hopefully we learn from that and we’ll turn up next week.”
Echoing her coach’s sentiments, captain Ansel stressed that the immediate fix for the side is simple discipline: holding the ball and building pressure through completed sets.
“I think the biggest lesson for us is to hold the ball, because we’ve given away some of the balls, we had them in the corner, but we just gave away loose balls,” Ansel said.
Asked how the squad plans to handle external pressure and social media commentary following the loss, Ansel offered a grounded perspective, encouraging her teammates to stay unified and block out the noise.
“Personally, I try to not look at social media, there’s comments from people that are not playing the game,” Ansel said. “They’re not in the field with us playing, so their opinion and backlash is what they want to say. We have no control over what they want to say, so what we can control is how we react to the things and keep ourselves positive going into the next game.”