England begin the countdown to the defining match of Stuart Lancaster’s reign amid accusations by former captain Will Carling that their head coach has created a “classroom orientated environment” among players treated as “schoolboys”.
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England’s World Cup-winning coach Sir Clive Woodward has criticised incumbent Stuart Lancaster for his substitutions in Saturday’s defeat to Wales – and for the decision not to kick a late penalty to tie the game.
“I know Richard Wigglesworth has said ‘what the hell do I know about rugby?'”.
Those two England wins came on the back of a dominant scrum but Australia’s set-piece has improved under coach Michael Cheika and Lancaster, speaking at his squad’s training base in Bagshot, southwest of London, on Sunday, said his side would not under-estimate Australia’s all-round game. Maybe a few of England’s PR handlers might have held his hand and given him a bit of guidance – to engage the brain before opening the mouth. If they fail, the class of 2015 will be the first host nation to crash out at the pool stage in the tournament’s history.
Leaders who espouse fidelity and clear goal and understanding, who we hope can operate with cold-blooded reasoning if we find ourselves in England’s predicament.
“If I was to go round the boys now and say “do you want to play tomorrow”, they would play tomorrow”, he said. They are not living it and doing it and I’m not bothered.
Williams will go through concussion protocols having been carried off on a stretcher following the incident, which could add to Wales’ long-list of injuries.
“I will try to impart a few previous knowledge but it’s all about 8pm this weekend”.
“This environment is player-led”.
“For us it?s external white noise that is totally irrelevant to what we need to do as a team”.
“On the field it’s the players making the decisions and it was a big call to go for the corner”, he said.
Wales remain haunted by the outcome of their campaign in the last World Cup which ended with a 9-8 loss to France in the semi-finals when they played 60 minutes with 14 men after skipper Sam Warburton was red-carded.
And on the one occasion when Scott Williams, the most creative of the Welsh threequarters, left Burgess and every other Red Rose defender clawing thin air, England were thankful to concede three points instead of seven.
“We got a bonus point against Fiji with the game against Australia to come, so we would have been very much still in the pool with no sense of panic”.
Lancaster had to make changes brought about by injuries but I thought Wales – for all the fact they were losing players at a rate of knots – got stronger.
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“We are travelling back to Wales (on Saturday night), and it is going to be a quick turnaround”. From today onwards we enter the forgive-and-forget, onwards-and-upwards phase, which will give way on Saturday morning to jingoistic expectation sugar-coated by an England-expects attitude. With two genuine No7s operating in tandem, and another with the wherewithal elsewhere in the line, a team can do remarkable things.
