LONDON – Georgia have opened their World Cup campaign with a hugely impressive 17-10 win over Tonga at Kingsholm in Gloucester on Saturday afternoon.
The opening match of Pool C was hugely entertaining as a sold out Kingsholm was treated to two sizeable teams leaving nothing in the tank, up front and out wide.
Georgia were huge up front and extremely combative in close as they smothered Tonga’s exciting back line with their well drilled defensive system. Toulon’s Mamuka Gorgodze turned in a man of the match performance at the back however the man of the match could have been awarded to any of Georgia’s forwards who were all immense.
Tonga can feel slightly aggrieved after having a try disallowed minutes before the end of the first half with a very tough forward pass call. However, they don’t have a right to feel too hard done by as they were very poor in the forwards and with ball in hand with the lack of time they’d spent together clearly taking its tool.
Unimaginative in the backs, they struggled to gel and make any headway against the well organised Georgian defence. After falling behind 17-3 after 60 minutes, they had no way through as they consistently were consistently turned over with Georgia making them pay by drilling them back into their own half.
A yellow card to Georgia in the final 10 minutes and a try out wide to Fetu’u Vainikolo brought Tonga back into it but that was as good as it got for the Tongas. As for Georgia, they had only beaten Namibia and Romania before at a Rugby World Cup so the win against Tonga is a considerable step up.