USA defeat a wake-up call, says Elima

France captain Olivier Elima believes last Friday’s shock defeat to USA will prove to be a wakeup call ahead of this week’s test against Papua New Guinea.

The Tomahawks caused an upset in Toulouse, winning 22-18 thanks to tries from Mike Garvey, David Marando, Matt Shipway and Kristian Freed.

“It was a bit of a kick up the backside,” he admitted. “It was a tough game.

“Probably we did not think USA would be that good. They played a very good game. The half-back was very good, the hooker and the wingers.

“Credit to them, they were very good but we made a lot of mistakes. We made enough chances to win the game but pushed the pass and lost the ball.

“At the end of the day we know there’s a few things we need to rectify but we know it will be easy to fix them in training.”

Richard Agar’s men are placed in Group B with New Zealand, Samoa and Papua New Guinea and Elima says the team are hoping to beat the latter two to secure a spot in the quarter finals.

“The goal would be to finish second in the pool which means we would have to beat Samoa and Papua New Guinea,” he added.

“That would mean we would get Fiji or Ireland in the quarter final but we will see how it goes.

“Obviously we are targeting to get as far as possible but first we have to deal with this difficult group.”