England’s Itoje promises ‘honest’ inquest into lacklustre Samoa win
England will hold an in-depth debrief on Monday into their lacklustre victory against Samoa, with Maro Itoje calling for honesty and pledging “awkward and tough” conversations before attention turns to Sunday’s quarter-final against Fiji in Marseille.
Itoje and co finished their pool-stage campaign with four wins from four but needed Danny Care’s late try and last-ditch tackle to overcome an inspired Samoa team, who gave England an almighty scare in Lille. England trailed 17-8 early in the second half and were error-prone throughout, harking back to their pre-World Cup campaign in which they endured disappointing defeats against Wales, Ireland and Fiji.
Although England were already assured of topping their pool, the feelgood factor gained from beating Argentina so emphatically at the start of the tournament has been lost by limping over the line against Samoa. Care said: “I hope the fans believe in us that we will be better; we have to be or we’ll find ourselves on a plane home.”
After being joined by Sam Underhill – summoned as a replacement for the injured Jack Willis – on Sunday in Lille, England are due to arrive on Monday in Aix-en-Provence, where the players will be expected to provide feedback, with Itoje insisting they must be clear about the standard of their performance.
“It goes without saying it wasn’t the performance we wanted,” Itoje said. “All the players will watch the game individually. We’ll probably start having these conversations between ourselves before we have the full-bore team meeting.
So everyone will come with ideas and start picking up each other individually.
“Then we’ll get together in the team meeting. And it’s normally led by Steve [Borthwick]. He will go through the facts. Sometimes there’s the narrative and the feelings but he’ll go through the facts of the game, what happened and why it happened.
“It’s an interactive process and the players will chip in if they have feelings on certain things and we then acknowledge what has happened and understand the reasons why.
“It has to be honest, without a doubt. We’ve had a number of pretty awkward and tough conversations and meetings over the last three, four months as a squad. And they’re necessary if you want to move forward. This is not about being hunky-dory. We need to get to the point where if there’s a problem, if there’s something that needs to be fixed, we need to fix it. If there’s things that we’re doing well, we need to nail down the reasons why we’re doing well, and move forward in a positive manner.”
If the room for improvement is evident, the ledger shows England top of their pool with a 100% record – a distant-looking prospect after they ended their warm-up campaign with a first defeat by Fiji at Twickenham.
“After the autumn we had, to sit here four from four and in the quarter-final, I think we’re in a good spot,” Care said.
“It’s hard to play really well every single week – there are times when things don’t go your way, you’re a little bit off it – but the good teams find a way to win and hopefully we’ve shown that we can find a way to win and that stands us in good stead for the rest of the tournament. Next week it’s going to be a team who are gunning for us but we’ll be ready for it.”
Care’s decisive try was his 10th for England and his first since 2018 but his tap tackle on Neria Fomai in the dying stages was equally vital to his side’s cause. “I don’t really remember it – it was a blur – but I remember thinking: ‘You can’t celebrate [scoring a try] like Alan Shearer and not make that tackle,’” he said.
“There were a couple of others – George Ford did it in the first half, Ollie Lawrence in the second – and the boys put their body on the line for 80 so the least you can do when you’ve been on the bench is run back and try and tackle and hopefully that shows a bit about what we’re about as a team. Even though it wasn’t a brilliant performance, we worked hard for each other.”