We’ll be ready for dirty tricks from Wales, declares ace Ford
GEORGE Ford has lit the fuse ahead of today’s Twickenham showdown by claiming Wales will resort to dirty tricks in an attempt to drag England down to their level.
Eddie Jones’ play-maker revealed England have gone as far as to draw up a battle-plan to deal with any cheap shots and niggle following last year’s Six Nations dust-up in Cardiff.
Kyle Sinckler lost the plot and England the match after the prop was goaded and riled by Wales captain Alun Wyn Jones and frontrower Rob Evans.
England had led 10-3 at halftime but pressed the self-destruct button and imploded to lose 21-13 to the Grand Slam champions in the making.
Sinckler had been targeted during the build-up to the stormy affair with then Wales coach Warren Gatland questioning his temperament and calling him an “emotional timebomb”.
The 26-year-old, in an interview during the World Cup, admitted: “The Wales game taught me a lot. I let my country down. If we had won that game we would have been Grand Slam champions.
“A man is in control of his emotions, a man looks after his family, he does the right things. He doesn’t let anything that frustrates him show, he just gets on with it.
“That’s something I’ve really tried to work on because I know my behaviour in the past has cost the team.”
Nevertheless, Ford expects “streetwise” Wales to employ similar inflammatory tactics towards Sinckler and admitted last year’s clash had been discussed in detail this week by coach Eddie Jones and his England squad.
“One thing I would say is, it’s not just him [Sinckler] – I know in that particular game he had a few things going on – but it is how the team can help individuals out,” stressed Ford.
“We have learned from that as a team. We know in Test matches they [opponents] will go after a few individuals, as we would to the opposition.
“‘Sinck’ probably reflected on that game from an individual point of view and learnt massively from it.
“He has got better at a few things himself and we have probably become more aware that those things are going to happen and what can we do as a team to make sure it doesn’t escalate to the point where it will cost us.
“We have definitely had a few discussions. It is a balance. You don’t want to make too much of a thing about it because you end up speaking about the opposition too much.
“But you have to anticipate it and be aware of it, so it doesn’t come as a shock at the weekend. We have discussed what potentially could happen and the plan of what we would do to look after individuals and look after the team,” outsidehalf Ford warned Wales.
“You don’t want to get to a game without thinking about it, talking about it as a team and then you think ‘Jesus, what is going on here’ and then before you know it five or 10 minutes of the game has gone, momentum has shifted and you are in that sort of a game again.
“We started last year’s game particularly well but we didn’t adjust or adapt well enough on the field to what Wales were trying to do us and the game they wanted to play.
“It got into a game that suited them more than us – a niggly, attritional game.
“There were a lot of contest areas and a lot of stop-start stuff.
“The disappointing thing is when situations like that happen you want to find a way to get momentum again and impose yourself and we didn’t do that. You don’t beat yourself up about losing momentum, but you probably beat yourself up about not regaining it back.
“It’s a big game for us to be back at Twickenham playing against a quality Wales side who are probably coming here with a bit of a point to prove.”