Fight for your chance to make history, boys ...like we did in 2006
ENGLAND kick off our World Cup campaign against holders Australia in Melbourne tomorrow – and the last time we beat them, 11 years ago, I was fighting for the cause myself.
I was literally fighting with Kangaroos forward Willie Mason during Great Britain’s 23-12 win at the Sydney Football Stadium.
The fact we haven’t won against them since says a lot about the challenge that lies ahead, but just as we were back in 2006, the players are ready. That Mason incident still gets talked about a lot.
I was captain and you lead by example, and I wanted to stand up for my team-mates no matter what happens.
I saw Mason punch Stuart Fielden and I just acted on instinct to go and help him out, I didn’t even think about it.
I managed to get a try in the second half as well, and it remains my favourite moment of my career – better than any Grand Final. At the end of the game there were thousands of British fans there and I stood there thinking, ‘Captaining your country to beat Australia in Sydney is what it’s all about’.
In the build-up to the match we had been written off – nobody had given us a chance.
You could see the lads getting more and more determined to win because of what was being said and written about us. The players had a lot of pride and we were having a lot of scorn poured on us.
The build-up was intense and we were ready to play.
You could tell everyone was on the money.
If Wayne Bennett asks me, as team manager, to speak about it – I will. But he and the players know what stands in front of them. The challenge is every bit as big – that’s why we’ve not done it for 11 years. Australia are missing big guns in Johnathan Thurston and Greg Inglis, but they talk about having three or four players for every position and I’m sure we’ll see that.
With England, we saw their potential in the win over Samoa in May – it was very clinical, very ruthless and very much a Bennett side.
We need to replicate that and more over the next six weeks.
We’d like to lay down a marker tomorrow and it’s a great chance for the boys to write their names in history.