Former England and British & Irish Lions centre Will Greenwood, has made a firm statement for Steve Borthwick’s side ahead of this afternoon’s Autumn Nations Series Test against Australia. Greenwood believes that it would be an ‘absolute shocker’ if England suffered a defeat to the Wallabies, who currently sit at ninth in the World Rugby rankings.
Ahead of England vs Australia on Saturday afternoon, 2003 World Cup winner Will Greenwood has given his verdict on the match on behalf of Grosvenor Sport.
“The headline is that it’s an absolute shocker if England lose the game on Saturday. There’s just certain days where you can’t lose to the ninth best team in the world who last time out got pumped by 20 points against New Zealand.
“They are a champion nation, they tend to win more stuff than they lose and right now they are building a pretty talented side. However, good sides like what England want to be don’t lose back-to-back games and also don’t throw away winning positions – they also don’t turn up in front of an 82,000 home crowd to get beat by a team ranked below them.
“England have also had a lovely ‘warm-up’ game against New Zealand and Australia haven’t played for a few weeks. They can’t lose this. Ironically, I’m backing Australia with an eleven point head start. I can’t see it being a thrashing.”
“I will say 35-25 to England. England need to score at least three tries for their peace of mind to say ‘ you know what lads, we can play rugby.”
Greenwood then cast his view upon Borthwick’s recent media dealings, as the England head coach expressed his disappointment after the gut-wrenching defeat to the All Blacks last weekend. Greenwood believes that his 2003 Rugby World Cup winning teammate and former England head coach Martin Johnson, would never had given such ‘media trained’ answers to do with England’s continued ‘learnings’.
“If you had said the word ‘learnings’ to Martin Johnson 15-years ago, would he: A. Give you a big hug and say ‘that’s alright’ or B. get you out on the training pitch, smack you in the face and say ‘what are you talking about ‘learnings’? Just do your job.’
“In reality, I do think Jamie George is probably going to be doing what Jonno said, this is just the vogue that media training leads to.”
The end to England’s battle with the All Blacks has been replayed time and again in this week’s media, as George Ford sent the decisive strike at the posts flying wide of the mark. England players and coaches have given their verdict on the unsuccessful move from the training pitch this week, with Greenwood the latest personnel to weigh in on the squandered match-winning move.
“It was like a football game, the classic ‘1-0 up away from home’ scenario, where you take the attacking midfielder off, bring the holding midfielder on and look to hold on. Football fans would say that’s completely the right thing to do.
“That’s not if you’re playing against Real Madrid, or the All Blacks. I said it after the game, I know you’ve got to kick – I like kicking, but when you just set yourself up so that it’s visually clear for the opposition that this is all you’re going to do.
“Firstly, this changes how they defend, which means they drop all of their players back and get ready for the charge down. And secondly, they go ‘we can attack from everything because if they get it turned over they will just kick it back to us’. Transitions in rugby, and football, are where you’re most vulnerable.
“New Zealand had a poor lineout and Alex Dombrandt seized on the ball. They should have looked to attack from a turnover. They should have flooded round the corner and had a go – but they went straight into “kick mode” – it was the mindset which invited the opposition back into the game.”
