Steward aiming to fire up the fans

ENGLAND full back Freddie steward has revealed the team’s mission to bring the Twickenham crowd back to life after last year’s dismal summer. saturday’s game against Wales will be England’s first home Test since their World Cup warm-up defeat by Fiji in August, when the crowd was sparse and sullen. The team have outlined their desire to reconnect with the public and steward hopes the project will start against Wales this weekend.

The 23-year-old said: ‘As players when you play for England you are expected to win and when you don’t win, understandably you don’t have the fans on your side and there was a bit of that in the warm-ups.

‘during the World Cup when we got to the semi-final it felt like that is what it can be like, as players we want that all the time but we have to put the performances on the field to earn that. The fans are the heartbeat of what we do.

‘We want Twickenham to erupt, and we want it to be a place we want to go and play in front of our fans and represent them.’ England have been lifted by the return to training of prop Ellis Genge, who missed the opening round victory over Italy.

Five players made their international debut in rome and steward hopes their first match at Twickenham is a positive experience.

‘Us being back at home is also synonymous with us being a new group,’ said steward. ‘This is essentially a fresh start, we have had our World Cup and we are on the start of a new cycle with fresh faces, new coaches and this is our chance to draw a line in the sand. We have spoken about that as a team, how do we make Twickenham a place where we can be our best and make it a difficult place to come. ‘There’s the mentality side of it in terms of being braver by using our attacking further from the line and trying to challenge the opposition, give them something to think about.

‘We were probably guilty early doors of being too onedimensional in terms of other teams knowing what we were going to do.

‘But hopefully by evolving the attack it will ask a few more questions of the opposition. The more time we’ve had together it helps.’ England are hoping to add more gainline punch to their attack, so yesterday’s medical bulletin that centre Ollie Lawrence could return to face scotland in round three following a hip problem was a significant boost. Lawrence will not be involved against Wales but ‘potentially’ could return to the England camp at the end of the week.