We have lots more to give, says Youngs
Ben Youngs has warned Australia, England’s quarter-final opponents, that Eddie Jones’ side have yet to reveal their full attacking hand during their World Cup campaign.
Wales’ victory over Uruguay yesterday confirmed that England will face the Wallabies at Oita Stadium on Saturday.
Australia knocked England out of their own World Cup in the final pool match at Twickenham four years ago. England have since avenged that defeat with a streak of six victories over the Wallabies since Jones took over in January 2016.
Youngs, who has only lost once in 10 starts against Australia, is confident that England can match the attacking firepower of the Wallabies, who finished second in their qualifying pool after a defeat by Wales at Tokyo Stadium. “Australia are very clever in how they attack – you think they are going to do one thing and they do something different,” said Youngs.
“I have always found them challenging in that aspect. I like the way they play with their attacking mindset – and you get chances when they do play. They always have a few things up their sleeve so it is important that we prep for that.
“To be honest, we haven’t shown a huge amount in any of our games. Against USA and Tonga we kept it low-key. Against Argentina we had more in the playbook but didn’t need to show our hand. We will make sure we are ready to go and have things we haven’t used yet.”
Youngs insists England will not be carried away, with the 2011 quarter-final defeat by a France side that was on the verge of implosion still a painful memory. Youngs, who is one of just four players in the squad with experience of a World Cup quarterfinal, said: “They were deemed to be in turmoil – my experience is that you can’t read into what happened in the past or even day-to-day.”
He is expecting interesting exchanges between Jones and Wallabies head coach Michael Cheika, two former team-mates at Randwick, and great coaching rivals.
Youngs said: “We can’t control what Australia are doing and they can’t control what we do. We just have to do everything we can to put us in a great position next week. I will leave the two coaches at it and watch from afar.”