Western Force coach Simon Cron says the side will continue to grow after the 40-31 win that stunned the highly fancied Queensland Reds at HBF Park on Saturday.
Cron was obviously pleased to get the first victory of the Super Rugby Pacific season under the belt but is looking for more when they face the Fijian Drua at Churchill Park in Lautoka next Saturday.
The Drua fired a warning of their own at the weekend, sinking the Waratahs 39-36 in golden point time.
The Force ran in six tries against the Reds, four in the first-half from Bayley Kuenzle, Thomas Franklin, Chase Tiatia and Nic White.
They added two more after the break, Kuenzle grabbed his second and Carlo Tizzano rounded off the night. Ben Donaldson converted five.
Cron said the side will improve.
"I still don't think, by any stretch of the imagination, that will be our best performance," he said.
"The good news is we can still be better. There's still upside to us.
"There was some composure, some good parts. I still think there are areas of our game we can do better.
"We put together a performance that got a win. It's about performance for us now.
"Every game has to be a great performance. We've got to make sure we play our type of rugby.
"I think we can do better and there's some good learnings to take out of tonight."
Cron said the message had been 'play as you train' and the four-try first-half when they built a 28-5 lead was an example of how they can perform.
"The boys were like 'right, what we train we do' and tonight they did," he said.
"The first-half was a good example of the type of rugby those boys can play, and our team can play."
Cron will focus on improving defence after the Reds scored four of their five tries in the second half.
"We can't let people back in," he said.
"We don't want to let 31 (points) in. Thirty-one points defensively we can improve on. A couple of little areas we can be better at.
"The boys will go again and look at how we can make that better and not let those points in and not let it become that close.
"We talked about effort and heart and what we want to do. A lot of guys stepped up and a lot of guys put in a lot of effort.
"We'll let the boys enjoy their win and a bit of family time and we go again. We look at how we can get better."
Cron described Bayley Kuenzle's two-try, man-of-the-match performance on the wing as "brilliant".
"One of the things we wanted down our edges was a strong hard ball carrier, and he did that," he said.
Captain Jeremy Williams, who watched most of the game from the sideline after suffering a calf injury on 30 minutes, described the result as "unreal".
He echoed Cron's message about taking training into a match and said discipline had been key to the victory.
"It's pretty special, watching the boys go to work, all the stuff we've doing at training," Williams said.
"To see that replicated on the paddock was really good to see. Throughout the whole game we were disciplined.
"We were very patient when we were holding onto the ball, weren't throwing 50-50's, really cherishing it, and built momentum, built phases and built pressure.
"We executed really well. Our defence for most part was really good. It's something we've been building on for the past couple of weeks.
"There were glimpses of that in the past couple of games. We finally put that together in an 80-minute performance."
The Force will fly out of Perth on Monday for a two-game road trip against Fijian Drua (Saturday 30 March) and the Blues (Friday 5 April).
No surprise that our AFGRI Player of the Match is Bayley Kuenzle, who stole the show landing two tries and putting on an excellent display of rugby 🏉 AFGRI Equipment Australia
Posted by Western Force Rugby on Saturday, March 23, 2024
