Wales have won their opening two games, but still have to face Fiji at the Millennium Stadium on Thursday and then Australia at Twickenham to complete their Pool matches.
The Wallabies moved to the top of Pool A with their 11 try, 64-3 hammering of Uruguay in Birmingham at the weekend, but still only have nine points, the same as Wales. England, who meet Australia at Twickenham on Saturday, are third with six points.
“Obviously, we have put ourselves in a good position, but the job is only half done and we are fully aware of that,” said Edwards in the wake of the 28-25 triumph over England.
“We are still not definitely through even if we get the job done against Fiji on Thursday. We didn’t come into this competition after the bitterness from 2011, just to beat England – we came to go as far as we can and that is still very much uppermost in our minds.
“We are far from safe yet. We have a lot more work to do and the lads who came so close in 2011 still have that feeling.”
The Welsh camp have three more nasty injuries to deal with following the win at Twickenham – and only five days to prepare for a mighty clash with Fiji.
“They have had longer rest and I have been incredibly impressed with Fiji. Against Australia they conceded three tries, two of them from mauls, so they went 80 minutes and only conceded one open-field try against a fully-loaded Wallabies team with Giteau, Folau and all the superstars,” said Edwards.
“They are a very, very strong defensive unit and are obviously a threat offensively and everyone knows about their broken field abilities. Another thing that impressed me about them against England was their scrum.
“We are fully aware that we have got our hands full on Thursday. I don’t think we will be resting too many players, but obviously that’s down to the boss. One thing you find out about Welsh teams, or any rugby team to be honest, is that when you get some momentum you want to keep that momentum going.
“We do have quite a long turn-around between the Fiji game and the Australia game, so the boys will get rested next weekend. So, we will be putting out a pretty strong team against Fiji, showing them the respect they deserve after they have played so well so far in the competition.”
There is likely to be more news on the injuries to Liam Williams, Scott Williams and Hallam Amos today, but Edwards remains confident that if more layers have to be replaced their stand-ins will step up to the mark.
“We have got some injuries once again. The medical staff are still assessing them throughout and I think we will have more of an idea where we are on Monday. Scans can take a couple of hours to come through,” said Edwards.
“But I think the resilience shown by these players’ means that if we have another player or two out of the World Cup, it just means someone else will step up and perform like we did last night. But at the moment, there is nobody definitely ruled out.
“However, potentially we could lose more – there is no doubt about that. But we just have to keep showing the resilience we have shown so far in the competition. We have to dust ourselves off and get on with it.”
