EDGE OF DARKNESS
Murrayfield pain will drive on England to lift gloom
JONNY MAY has revealed the depth of wounded pride which has England fired up to set the record straight in France.
Eddie Jones today names his team for Paris and expects captain Dylan Hartley to be passed fit.
Hard-running centre Ben Te’o is pushing for a recall as England muscle up for a Le Crunch clash following defeat at Murrayfield, Ebut flanker Sam Underhill could miss the rest of the season after rupturing a tendon in his big toe.
And May makes no bones of the Six Nations champions having a backlash in mind for France on Saturday night.
“There is an edge in camp, you can feel it,” said the Leicester player. “The boys have been smashing each other in training. There is a desire to get back out there and put it right.
“The mood was pretty dark after Murrayfield and we’ve had to sit on it for a couple of weeks. We’ve been hard on ourselves and we badly want to go out there and give it our best game.”
May says Hartley has been setting the tone for this redemption mission despite a calf strain restricting his participation in training.
“His message has been, ‘Listen, we don’t want the coaches blowing their whistles, telling us to up it; we want the coaches blowing their whistles, telling us to rein it in’,” said the wing.
“There have been no actual dust-ups but it has been physical. It has needed to be. Our breakdown wasn’t good enough against Scotland.”
England plan to start fast in order to douse French passions, though that was also the idea against a fortnight ago when they were schooled by the Scots.
“We knew they were going to throw the house at us so our defence needed to be good,” May continued. “We knew they were going to go at the breakdown so our breakdown needed to be good. We knew if they got their tails up they grow an arm and a leg and get even better. All those things happened. We knew they were coming. We couldn’t stop it. We weren’t good enough on the day.”
They cannot afford a repeat at Stade de France.
“It wasn’t a case of one person missing a tackle, it was a case of us not being on the same page,” added May. “But I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel, because we’re still a great team.”