England are anxious to stop the rot
ENGLAND’S players will be ordered to hit the Boks with a backlash at Twickenham today — to avoid a fifth consecutive Test defeat and end eight years of suffering against the world’s No 2-ranked side.
They haven’t beaten South Africa since 2006 and that disastrous year was also the last time England lost more than four Tests in succession.
Stuart Lancaster’s men go into today’s QBE series encounter on the back of four straight losses to New Zealand — knowing there is ‘no hiding place’ if they fall short again in their preparations for next year’s World Cup.
Amid all the talk of the Springboks being in wounded-beast mode after their defeat in Dublin last Saturday, the hosts are ready to unleash their own frustrations.
‘Of course there’s going to be a backlash after the fourth defeat,’ said forwards coach Graham Rowntree yesterday. ‘ That is being said in our camp.
‘The guys are beating themselves up about it; we’re beating ourselves up about it. That was at the start of the week. But you get out on the training field; start sorting things out and move forward.’
The quality of the opposition will not serve as an excuse for English failure. Rowntree added: ‘ We’ve got to beat these teams at Twickenham. We keep coming close. South Africa are the next big southern hemisphere team to come to our stadium; we’ve got to beat them, we know that. And we’ll go in all guns blazing to do that.
‘The fact we’ve not beaten them for X amount of years is almost irrelevant. We’ve just got to win this next game. There i s an expectation on us, there certainly is within. We are desperate to win. You can’t hide the fact we lost the last four games. There’s no hiding place; we had some very frank discussions but you’ve quickly got to move on.’
England scrum-half Danny Care will win his 50th cap today and the 27-year- old acknowledged that team development must soon give way to tangible success.
‘I still think we are learning, but it will come to a time when the learning needs to stop and we need to get results,’ he said.
‘We have shown in patches just how good we are, but we need to turn that into 80-minute displays. The belief is there. We’ve got it and we need to put it on the park.’
None of the home players have experienced a Test victory over South Africa, but visiting captain Jean de Villiers was wary of taking too much confidence from that, saying: ‘A big part of our group never experienced beating the All Blacks and we managed to do that earlier this year. It’s the old thing about records; they’re there to be broken.’
After naming his team for today, Lancaster conceded England’s kicking game must improve from last week. So the onus is on Owen Farrell to rediscover the authority in his game after an injury- disrupted start to the season, while Care must share the load and sharpen his execution.
The pack must maintain the superb set-piece standards of last week — especially in their lineout work — as they will be tested to the limit by the wily Springbok forwards. But in their breakdown work and ball-carrying, England must be several levels better, or they will be eclipsed.
Saracens No 8 Billy Vunipola has been warned his starting status is i n danger and the 22-year- old is determination to be more forceful.
Reflecting on his contribution against the All Blacks, he said: ‘I didn’t enforce my normal game. I was quiet and have to improve. I’ve got to impose myself like I do at my club, and be who I am rather than tiptoeing round everything.’