Samoa boss reacts to ill-tempered finale as England win opening Test

England, coached by Shaun Wane, got off to a flyer, scoring three early tries and leading 16-6 at half-time before Samoa put up a better show in the second stanza, in front of a 15,000 crowd at Wigan.

The final moments of the game exploded into a series of scuffles, involving virtually every player on the field and setting up a high-octane rematch in the final match of the series at Headingley, in Leeds, next Saturday. It was the teams’ first meeting since Samoa’s extra-time victory in a 2022 World Cup semi-final and the pre-match tension ramped up when the two sets of players went head-to-head during Samoa’s pre-match Sivi Tau war dance.

Gardner, though, denied there is any real spite between the sides. “It’s a Test match,” he said in his post-game press conference.

“We’ve travelled a long way to play this game so of course there’s going to be feeling. England are playing for their country and we’re playing for ours. You expect there would be feeling in the game and that feeling stays on the field. That’s how it has always been in rugby league.

“You respect each other off the field and on the field you are going at it. That’s how games should be played. If there’s a scuffle or whatever it is, it’s left out on the field and we move on and start fresh again next week. When that happens there’s level of frustration in games from players. That just happens in footy. It’s not a big thing.”

Looking at what went wrong for Samoa, who were outscored by six tries to three, Gardiner admitted “I felt we didn’t take opportunities when we needed to.

“Test matches are always won by kicking it down to the corner, keeping the opposition in the corner and making it difficult for them to come out of their end. In the first half we didn’t do that well enough. I thought we did a much better job in the second half and put a lot more pressure on the opposition.

“For us, it’s about learning lessons and controlling the momentum for longer, putting it deeper into the corner and being able to control the middle part of sets. I didn’t think the first half was too bad, but we gave three penalties away, resulting in two tries.

“That’s not good enough at any level. If you’re going to give penalties away, you’ve got to be able to defend those penalties.” Samoa were awarded just one penalty to six for England, who also received four set restarts, but Gardiner had no issues with referee Liam Moore. “I just think he refereed the game by the rules,” he said.

England are preparing for an Ashes series in Australia next year and the Samoa boss described the hosts’ performance as “very strong”. He said: “They carried very well through the middle of the field, they built good ruck speed and they had good support and good effort around the ball. They scored a couple of tries off offloads and that says it’s a side that’s working hard for each other. I thought they did that, they played really well.

“I don’t think anything changes for us. If we can get our start to the game right and get our discipline right, we can match it with any team. We just have to make sure we get our stuff right. In any Test match there’s going to be ups and downs, we’ve just got to be better at dealing with those ups and downs.”