Three tries in the last 11 minutes confirmed Samoa a place in Rugby World Cup 2019 with a 42-28 second-leg victory over Germany in Heidelberg.

The visitors had virtually assured their place in Pool A with their 66-15 first-leg win in Apia but an unlikely defeat looked on the cards when the hosts took a 28-21 lead with less than 15 minutes on the clock in the play-off battle between the third-place team from the Pacific Tri-Nations and second-ranked team from the European qualification series.

Until that point it had been an error-strewn performance from the Samoans, who eventually clicked into gear with Ah See Tuala scoring twice either side of an Ed Fidow try to break Germany’s resolve and spare his own side’s blushes. Tuala finished the match with 22 points, while Fidow and scrum-half Melani Matavao bothy also touched down twice.

Samoa’s qualification sees them join Ireland, Scotland, Japan and Russia in Pool A, while Germany have another chance to make the finals in Japan through the repechage tournament in Marseille in November, where they will compete against Canada, Hong Kong and the runner-up in the Rugby Africa Championship.

Tries from Jaco Otto, Samy Fuchsel and Jarrid Els had put the hosts within touching distance of arguably their greatest ever triumph but, with temperatures in Heidelberg hotter than they had been in Apia, Germany were unable to hold on as Samoa’s superior fitness came into play.

“After the game in Samoa definitely I had many doubts about if we were prepared to go to the next step," said Germany coach Pablo Lemoine. "That next step is qualifying for a World Cup. Today we can see they have enough potential. We have a lot of things to improve, but everything we can improve, we can work on.”

But Samoa captain Chris Vui was delighted with his side's comeback. “The game was a bit patchy, there were definitely a lot of errors that we thought we could have executed better, definitely in the line-out and dropped balls in general," he said. “It always goes back to those little errors with our team. It’s not a skill thing, is just execution. We can definitely work on it, it’s not a problem.”