Samoa cruise past the Kumuls

Samoa have secured their place in the quarter finals of the 2013 Rugby League World Cup with a 38-4 win over a hapless Papua New Guinea in front of just under 7,000 fans at Craven Park in Hull.

The Kumuls were coming off a heartbreaking one point loss to France and were looking to make amends for that. Samoa also coming off a loss this time to New Zealand and were looking to bounce back with a win.

Papua New Guinea needed the best start possible and for what happened you could not find a more polar opposite. After just two tackles the Kumuls dropped the ball and not long after the Samoans opened the scoring through Suaia Matagi.

The Samoans kept the scoring going early on with tries to Samoa scored through Anthony Winterstein and then Pita Godinet. These tries all came off the back of errors from Papua New Guinea who were unable to string any sort of attack together with either drop ball or throwing offloads that were intercepted by Samoa.

It was showing early that if Papua New Guinea had any chance of stopping Samoa they would need to deal with Anthony Milford who was an elusive figure on the field especially after managing to beat six PNG players only to be held up in goal.

Papua New Guinea managed to put some good attack together and cross the line only to be called back for a forward pass. From there Samoa went down the opposite end of the field for Antonio Winterstein to score although had to be signed off on by Video Referee Ashley Klein.

Before halftime, the Kumuls tried a chip over the top which was plucked out of the air by Ben Roberts who raced 60m downfield to score untouched under the posts and after Milford converted the Samoans took a 28-0 lead into half time.

If Papua New Guinea wanted to get back into the match they would need to hold the ball and after some good attack they managed to score their only try of the match through Jessie-Joe Nandye which was followed by a conversion attempt that can only be called terrible.

Errors crept into both sides games and neither side was mounting any real pressure with knock-on