Culture clash for Kefu (From Bucks Free Press)

Culture clash for Kefu

3:20pm Friday 19th March 2010 in

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STEVE Kefu admits meeting Shaun Edwards and seeing him in action was a bit of shock.

The laid back Australian said: “I’d never met him so the first time I was a little bit shocked. I like to relax and have a joke before a game. Shaun isn’t like that.

“His pre-match talks are fantastic and he’s good for our forwards. When our forwards aren’t switched on or are not quite there he comes in and revs them up.

“But I don’t need to be with them at that time so I can stay away.

“He doesn’t really fire up at half-time though. He just gets straight to the point of what we need to do and a few wrong decisions we’ve made on the field.”

However, Kefu admits that being around Edwards and Wasps has given his game a hard edge.

He said: “It’s a lot more aggressive in England than I was used to, and especially here at Wasps – we like the physicality and the confrontation.

“Shaun encourages it and I think everyone picks up an extra 10-15 per cent.

“I’m getting used to it now, especially with the weather. It’s going to be slow so you’re going to get more contact.

“Teams aren’t going to go around you, they’re going to try and go through you.

“But with Wasps and the way we defend, I’m getting more confident with the tackling and the contact. I relish it now.

As Wasps’ current 12 though, Kefu has a key role to play in an attacking sense and his partnership with the fly half, be it Dave Walder or Danny Cipriani, needs to fire.

He said: “They are totally different players. Danny likes to run and Dave likes to control the game a bit more. It took me a while to get used to both of them but now any one of them can play and I’m used to it. And I think they’ve started to learn my style of play as well and are catering to it a bit more.

“The ten, 12 combination is very important, but I think the nine, ten combination is probably more important.

“If you look at teams with good nines and tens, they’ve always succeeded and won trophies so Joe Simpson’s injury was a shock for us.”