Force hungry to add more width

Editor

Western Force head coach Michael Foley sets out to motivate his back-line players to embrace an expansive brand of rugby.

"I have enormous confidence. Every single one of our backs has done work as a second receiver. Rather than just using your centres we’ve also used all our back three," he said.

"They all have a real clarity about what the expectations are in that role and how important that role is to enable us to play with greater width."

Former U20 Australian play-maker, Kyle Godwin, has been training at his preferred inside centre position throughout the pre-season.

"Kyle has trained exclusively at 12 through the pre-season. Kyle can play in either centre role but we’ve made a commitment to exclusively train him and play him at 12 this year," Foley said.

The Force coach noted that he wants his side to play with a care-free attitude.

"Above all else we want to go into this game and play bravely. We want to stretch ourselves, play at much higher speeds," Foley said.

"I want to see us be physical. We’re not going in there to play carefully. Careful is not something we’re interested in.

"We want to be brave in the way we play and we need to do that with real intensity. It won’t be a cautious performance.

"We want to know that we’ve played at our absolute limit and come out of the game knowing there are things to work on.

"That will come with a little bit of risk, we will make an error or two, but that comes with the challenge to get back up and play again.

"Mentally we want to keep telling ourselves to sprint. We've practised that, we are comfortable to play that way. Potentially that’s where the advantage lies for us.”

The pre-season matches for the Western Australian-side will be against the Hurricanes and the Asia Pacific Dragons.

Foley will announce a 28-man squad for these matches that will exclude skipper Matt Hodgson and scrum-half Alby Mathewson.

These two players are being rested but will be part of the team running out against the Dragons.