LONDON : England captain Jamie George has urged his team to show the “courage” to play for 80 minutes when they face Australia on Saturday after a hat-trick of defeats to New Zealand where they effectively stopped attacking in the latter stages.
Last week’s 24-22 defeat at Twickenham came after two July losses when England also led in the final quarter but did not add to their points tally and were overhauled.
Against an Australia team who lost five of their six Rugby Championship matches this year, including a record 67-27 thumping by Argentina, George says England need to keep their foot on the pedal.
“We’re going to want to go out and play with courage and be brave and take teams on and never sit back,” he told reporters.
“The challenge is, can we continue to do that for 80 minutes? There is a fine line between being relentless and almost reckless, but we’re very clear about how we want to go about things.
“The more that we can do that, the more that we can then back that up with pressure off the back of clear execution, I think we can overcome a good team.”
After seeing George Ford’s late penalty hit a post and then his drop-goal sail wide in a thrilling finale last week, the Twickenham crowd were in forgiving mood, but there will be no such understanding of any repeat of coach Steve Borthwick’s “we’re a young team who are developing” mantra should things go wrong on Saturday.
Not only have England won 10 of the teams’ last 11 meetings since their 2015 World Cup pool loss, they have usually won convincingly. In the last four games at Twickenham, England have won with an average 19-point margin and the closest the Wallabies have got was a 16-point, 37-21 defeat in 2016.
Even with wily coach Joe Schmidt plotting a way to haul them up from a shocking ninth place in the rankings, England’s fans will be turning up ready to celebrate another win over one of their biggest sporting rivals.
George, however, says that the players and coaches have not allowed themselves to think that way. “I try to take as much of that context out of it,” he said.
“Of course we want to go out and win but the less expectation we have on the game and how it is going to play out and what we are trying to get out of it the better.
“We have got to focus on being clinical – game plan and executing – and if we do that the results will take care of themselves.
“If you worry about that expectation too much and start sitting back and being fearful of failure rather than going out there and taking teams on… we will take Australia on on Saturday, that has been the message all week.”
George will be backed up on the bench this week by Luke Cowan-Dickie, who should make his first international appearance since 2022 after overcoming a series of injuries and health issues.
“I couldn’t be happier for Luke. He has gone through so much over the last couple of years and he’s like a puppy running around, screaming, shouting, he’s quite annoying at times,” George said.
“He’s a brilliant scrummager and not long ago he was involved in all three tests on the Lions tour and rightly so. His experience always adds a huge amount and when he gets the opportunity on Saturday he’ll be flying around, I know that.”
