It was sweet payback for Australia’s scrum embarrassment at the 2007 World Cup, where England marched all over the Wallabies and bullied them out of the set-piece contest.
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Ritchie was adamant there would be no relaxation of England’s policy of selecting only home-based players for Test duty.
Wales and Australia have locked in quarter-final berths after they both toppled World Cup hosts England in the pool stages. “I’ve just sat in front of the coaching team and said we’ve got a game to play this Saturday”, Lancaster said.
England rugby head coach Stuart Lancaster says he has replayed his team’s defeat at the hands of Australia and says he stands by his players.
“But I felt with 15-20 minutes to go, it was like sitting in the (coaches’) box myself because you are going through the emotions of what the coaches are doing”, he said.
Coach Stuart Lancaster’s side did reduce the deficit when Anthony Watson bulldozed over the line with 25 minutes to play and a penalty from Owen Farrell had the crowd on their feet, but Australia ultimately proved too canny.
“We have gone cycle after cycle and what we want to do is look at the criteria for a successful England management?”
Lancaster, who was elevated from his role with England’s youth teams following Martin Johnson’s exit in 2011, offered a simple response when asked what he would have done differently during the brief, failed campaign on home soil.
“So to have qualified now gives us the opportunity to take the shackles off a bit and to start focusing on winning the group”.
“It is just about ourselves at the moment and trying to improve on that”, said Cheika. We’ve spent a lot of time looking forward over the last two to three years and now we need to look at what we need to do next. We got a lot of momentum and we closed out a very good win.
A 33-13 rout by Australia – a record losing margin to the Wallabies at Twickenham – condemned England to becoming the first host nation to exit the tournament at the group phase.
(Christophe Ena/AP) Both of the Wallabies’ World Cup triumphs – in 1991 and 1999 – were achieved on British soil, while they also reached the final in Sydney in 2003.
Stuart Lancaster went to that last World Cup as second-team coach, with a watching brief.
“From my point of view, my priority is to get the team ready for (the last Pool A game against) Uruguay”.
“We wanted to put in a performance to make Australians proud, and we delivered”, said the fly-half.
After all the fearless talk over the past three years that England would play exciting, fast-paced rugby, this game showed just how far off that boast Lancaster’s men were. In the end, we simply were not good enough.
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“There will be an inquest and consequences for those in charge – and those who made the appointments – but for the remainder of the competition itself I would like to see all concerned go to ground and keep their counsel”.
