Dominant victory for Musikanth and team

JACK MILNER

South African coach Kevin Musikanth was unhappy with the team’s previous performance when they were well beaten by Croatia, but he was delighted with the form the team produced against Bosnia.

“We did a lot of self-analysis and rectified the mistakes we made against Croatia,” said Musikanth from Israel.

This European championship match was deemed vital for Israel to have any hopes of getting promotion to a higher division. Israel play in Conference 1 South at this stage of the 2017-2018 Rugby Europe International Championships. They split their first two group games, both on the road, downing Andorra before losing to Croatia.

This was their last match for 2017, but the win will give them a boost for their final match in the group which will be against Malta.

“It was great to see the whole team buy in after four weeks together for the last game of 2017 and the only home game of this part of the series.”

The match also saw the debut of South Africa-born tighthead and Maccabian Jaryd Sichel, who played for the entire 80 minutes.

“Captain Gilad Goldstein and centre Ori Orbitul were outstanding,” said Musikanth. “The team scored five tries in the first half, many of which were sweeping moves, almost the length of the field.

“We analysed the Bosnian game carefully and I was proud of how the team bought in to an enterprising game plan as well as limiting their mistakes after an error-ridden match against Croatia, who is a promising young team.”

The backline scored all but one of the seven tries, as Israel dominated all aspects of the game. The final match against Malta could be a group decider, although they have a match in hand.

After this game Israel moved into second place on the log, just one point behind Malta.

Musikanth replaced Raanan Penn, who was the team’s head coach for around a decade. Penn has stuck around this campaign as assistant coach to help Musikanth “get to know the system and the guys”.