England captain Jamie George is rallying his troops for this weekend’s challenge, as Ireland head to Twickenham for a fourth round Six Nations clash. The visitors have been labelled as the favourites for Saturday’s battle, yet George is adamant about his side’s resiliency on home turf.
The Saracen spoke in a recent England media session, and emphasised the importance of approaching this fixture with the correct mindset of defending the home soil. There is no disputing Ireland’s strengths heading into this match, as Andy Farrell’s men are the only undefeated side left in the competition and are eying up an unprecedented second consecutive Grand Slam.
Such a feat has never been accomplished in the modern Six Nations era, yet George is more focussed on his side’s performance and defending his home, than spoiling the incoming Irish party.
“We believe that we’re going to go there and win. We don’t want anyone, any opposition, to come to Twickenham and have an easy ride. We have respect for them. I can’t emphasise enough how much respect we have for Andy Farrell and Peter O’Mahony’s team. They’ve got brilliant players across the board. But this is England. This is Twickenham. This is home. And we’re going to defend our home, like every Englishman would.”
“I am not too worried about spoiling their party too much. I want to make sure we get our things right. If we get our things right then we are going to come out on the positive end of the result. That is genuinely what I believe and I have seen some positive signs this week that we are going to be going in the right direction.
“It’s going to be a tough test, it’s going to take everything that we’ve got, we’re going to need absolutely everyone to be at the top of their game. When we get that, I think we can be a very good team.”
“We don’t think about things like that. I don’t think it’s a positive way of thinking about things. We want to win this game, we know that we can win this game. I think it’d be a huge thing for English rugby if we did because we’ve got a lot of belief from within this squad, from within this group that we’re capable of doing very, very special things. We spoken about bringing people with us. A result like this at the weekend would be a huge way of going about that.”
England’s latest outing in the Six Nations, witnessed the first defeat of the Jamie George era. After back-to-back wins over Italy and Wales, England were outdone by Scotland, as Gregor Townsend’s men racked up a 30-21 victory in their Murrayfield cauldron.
Despite taking an impressive lead in the match’s early goings, England were unable to build on George Furbank’s blitzing try, as Scotland regained their footing for the eventual victory. Handling errors were amongst England’s undoing in the Scottish capital, and George expressed how it was a difficult review, following his first defeat as his nations’ skipper.
“Has it been difficult? Yeah, have there been some difficult conversations? Yes. Did there need to be? Absolutely. Because like we have spoken about previously, we were very clear about how we wanted to go to Scotland. What happened was that we came out of the blocks fast. I think we shocked Scotland in what we were trying to do. I think you saw a very clear blueprint of the way that we wanted to play and how we were manipulating how Scotland wanted to play. That’s ultimately what we wanted to do.
“Then we made a few mistakes and we probably deviated from the plan. That was disappointing. Why we did that, we needed to get to the bottom of and also get a better understanding of if that happens again how do we make sure that we stick to the plan. I have got to hold my hand up and make sure that people are more accountable for that. It was difficult, I found, on the field to work out exactly what was going on because we were guilty of a lot of handling errors that were probably similar.
“In answer to your question has it been difficult? Probably in the first few meetings of the week but what I saw was an amazing opportunity for where this team can go and the sort of impact that we can have on an opposition and the more we focus on making sure we get that stuff right the better the team we are going to be.”
Pivoting from Scotland and back to this weekend’s Celtic opponents, George expressed how England’s performances have been recently benefitted, when the odds were stacked against them. Looking back at last year’s Rugby World Cup, England were able to rally in the unfavourable position, in their victories against Argentina and their impressive semi-final outing against the Springboks.
“I think historically it has worked well for us. I think you look at the big performances in the World Cups. If you look at the World Cup just gone, no one gave us a chance against Argentina, no one gave us a chance against South Africa. I know the South Africa result did not go the way we wanted to but again the sort of performance showed the sort of team that we wanted to be.
“I think fundamentally we don’t want to go in with an underdog title ever when we’re playing at Twickenham. But at the same time we’re playing against a very, very good team, the best team in the world who we have the utmost respect for. Like Steve (Borthwick) said, ‘we’ve got to do everything we can to make sure that we play the game on our terms’.”
Despite Ireland’s undeniable aura as one of the top sides in the world, England have been bringing their weekend’s opponents back down to earth in this weeks preparations. George reminded the reporting media that Ireland are in fact mortals, and can be beaten on the right day when the plan comes together. England have been gearing up their armaments throughout the past fortnight, with a regimented attack set to take aim at the Irish gain-line.
“What I will say is that Ireland are as complete a team as there is out there at the minute. In terms of world rugby, they are fantastic across the board. At the same time, like I said about Scotland, if we play the way we want to play, you make teams think twice. You make teams second guess themselves and think slightly differently about how they go about things. I feel like it’s been that it has not been easy because they dictated to the opposition in that way for Ireland so far in this competition.
“Our defence, for example, we want to try and take away as much time and space from those guys as possible because we know what they can do with time and space. At the same time, we know how hard we are going to have to work to get the ball back.
“We have spent a lot of time, more time in terms of percentage of the week than I have ever experienced in an England team, focusing on our attack and making sure off the back of turnovers and kick returns and whatever Ireland present to us that we are as sharp as we can be.”
“I don’t really blame people for thinking that way (Ireland to win) because they are a great team. I think it’s off the back of some fantastic performances over the last two or three years. With a brilliant coach like Andy Farrell, they’re always going to be a great team. But they’ve got to come to an end, and they got to get result here. We’re a team that’s hurting off the back of the Scotland result, hugely motivated, hugely excited about the potential of where we can go and it’s about time we put that out in the field.”
Despite Ireland looking like a flawless side on paper, George hinted at some cracks that have started to emerge in the armour. The front-row was ever-diligent when discussing the intricacies of the scrum and line-out, with such pivotal set-pieces providing possible passages into the fortress.
“If you got after the Ireland set piece but on the flip side it is something we always have had huge pride in. We know that you can put Ireland’s line-out under pressure but at the same time I think they’ve got the world’s best ranked maul at the minute. It’s a balancing act in terms of exactly what sort of plan you’re going to go after.
“At the scrum, we know the best performances we’ve had over the last 10 years in English rugby have been based around a dominant scrum, a dominant maul. The more that we can focus on that gives us a huge leg into the game. We know that set piece can dictate field positions, can dictate territory but also points.
“We’re really clear about what we want to go after. The Irish scrum’s been very good throughout this Six Nations, they’ve got good operators up front. We also see it as a huge way that we can have a footprint on this game. It’s something we’ve always wanted to make sure that we do. We know a couple of those guys pretty well. I know Tadhg (Furlong) pretty well. We’ve got some change out of previous results.”
“Like I said before, it’s always a big balancing act. Something we need to be clear about is where we kick the ball out. We know they’re very good off launch plays, strike plays, very innovative off line-outs. It’s a blessing to have operators like George (Martin), Ollie (Chessum), Maro (Itoje) and we will be going hard after their lineout. We’ve been going hard after every team’s lineout. Against Scotland in terms of our lineout defence. That’s definitely something we’ve been focussing on this week.”
The skipper then sounded off on the young players in the squad, ahead of what could be their most high-profile fixture in an England shirt. Manny Feyi-Waboso is certainly in the spotlight, as the Exeter Chiefs wing gets set for his first test match start at 21-years-old. George highlighted how players like Feyi-Waboso are integral to the evolution of the England squad, in what will be a testing match against the current standard bearers of international rugby.
“It tends to sharpen the focus. There’s a huge excitement around challenging ourselves against the best. There’s a lot of guys who have not had a huge amount of experience in these sorts of games, but it is an opportunity for some of the guys who have been around the block to sort of lead the way and tell the guys exactly what it is going to be about. The younger guys are just excited to get out there and experience what it is all about.
“We want to we want to be more expensive. We want to use the ball more we want to get the ball into the hands of the likes Immanuel Feyi-Waboso. We’ve got huge talent in this team, not just that wide but up front and we want to be physical and direct with teams. The foundation of English rugby is always going to be the same, it’s going to be around big defence, a huge set piece.
“That’s going to be the foundation of this game and that always has to be there. But the evolution of it is how we try and manipulate the ball, how we try and move the ball around and score tries and get some excitement building around our attack.”