Warren Gatland’s men face South Africa in the last four in Yokohama on Sunday following a dramatic 20-19 victory over France last weekend.
While Edwards acknowledges Wales will have to improve on their performance in Oita to get past the Springboks, he maintains his players are good enough to claim a fifth straight win over Rassie Erasmus’ side.
“It’s ‘seize the moment’ time,” said Edwards.
“These opportunities don’t come around very often. The last time was in 2011 and we just missed out then. You want to be involved in the big games and there is no bigger than the World Cup final.
“It’s on, isn’t it? For the last three games we’ve played we have targeted that as a block. We said we had to win all three.
“We would have been incredibly disappointed if we hadn’t. We’ve managed to win those games, not all smoothly, but I think that’s character building.
“We’re into the last bit of the competition now. If you’re not excited by this, you’re in the wrong game.”
Despite having every confidence in Wales’ defence, Edwards believes his side will face the most physical side in world rugby in South Africa.
“We’ll have to muscle up on the advantage line,” he said.
“They’re huge men. Out wide they’ve got incredible speed.
“If there was a 4×100 relay race with all the teams in the World Cup, they would probably be the fastest. They’ve got two pretty canny half-backs. I’m a huge fan of both those players at nine (Faf de Klerk and 10 (Handre Pollard).
“We’ve had a decent record against them recently, but just like against France, nearly all the games have been one-score games. Any team coached by Rassie, who I have a great deal of respect for, is going to be well organised. They’ll have a strong defence and a strong kicking game.
“They have got blowtorch speed on the edges. I was pleased with the fact that we conceded 19 points against France. I wasn’t happy the way we conceded those 19 points.
“But what I was pleased with was the fact we scored 14 points with our defence.
“It was an unbelievable rip from Tomos Williams which set up the last try and the big shot from Jake Ball which dislodged the ball from where we scored the first try.”
