WALES coach Tom Brindle has said the squad will determine amongst themselves what success looks like during their maiden World Cup campaign.
Facing England, Australia and Samoa in the group stages leave Wales with a tough task to progress any further than those opening games, but Brindle believes his side will have to look past the scoreboard to truly assess their performances.
“Everyone is excited, but understandably there are some nerves as well,” conceded Brindle, who will watch his side make their World Cup debut against England on Saturday.
“We have been quite clear on what our aims and ambitions are and what we want to achieve while we’re out there.
“We want to go out and put in good performance and compete, not just participate, and we need to embrace the competition and enjoy it.
“We have three of the top four sides in the world in our group, so we are in a tough group so ultimately we have to live by our values and go out there and compete.
“Ultimately we will get to define what competing means for us, so if we just look at what the scoreboard says as a measure of success, then that will be a mistake on our behalf. So we have to define the areas that we can compete in and that we can perform to our best at.
“If we can define them and then achieve those aims then that will be our version of success.
“The last time we played England, we set ourselves a couple of key metrics that we wanted to be successful in. We reached them in that game, so although the scoreline wasn’t the best and we wanted it to be closer – in some key areas we competed and hopefully we can do something similar in this tournament.”
