Pressure’s on the All Blacks – Jones

Tokyo – Eddie Jones went into his usual pre-match attack mode when he insisted that New Zealand would be buckling under the pressure of trying to retain the World Cup, while his England team had nothing to lose in their eagerly awaited semifinal.

It is well-trodden ground for Jones, who loves to toss a verbal hand grenade to stir things up before big games – and Saturday’s semifinal at Yokohama is the biggest of his four-year tenure.

“No one thinks we can win, there’s no pressure on us, we’re going to relax and have a great week,” he said.

“New Zealand will be thinking about their ‘threepeat’. They talk about walking towards the pressure but this week the pressure is going to be chasing them down the street.”

Jones said he didn’t necessarily feel the pressure would make them vulnerable but insisted it was something they would have to address.

“The busiest bloke in Tokyo this week will be Gilbert Enoka, their mental skills coach. They have to deal with all this pressure of winning the World Cup three times and it is potentially the last game for their greatest coach,” he said.

With England winning only one of their past 16 games against the All Blacks, it is hardly surprising Jones has been obsessing about them since the World Cup draw was made 2½ years ago and their semifinal destiny became likely.

The teams have met only once since Jones took over, when the All Blacks won 16-15 at Twickenham a year ago after a late match-winning try for England was controversially ruled out.

“We trialled some things in November against them and we can do things a little bit better in this game,” Jones said.

“If you look at what we’ve done as a team over the last four years, we’ve had some great wins, some significant losses,” he said. “We’ve learnt from those and there is a togetherness in this team that will carry them through.” – Reuters