Someone spied on us but we don’t ‘care’: England
Read skips training but Hansen 100% confident he will play semifinal
TOKYO, Japan, Oct 22, (RTRS): Eddie Jones, not for the first time this year, claimed on Tuesday that someone had been spying on England’s first World Cup training session back in Tokyo after team officials spotted a red light in a building overlooking their pitch.
“There was definitely someone in the apartment block filming but it might have been a Japanese fan,” the Australian said.
Despite the training pitches being surrounded by high sheeting and security guards patrolling to prevent unauthorised filming, Jones said he didn’t mind if the session had been recorded.
Jones said he used to do the same thing but hadn’t done so since 2001. “You just don’t need to do it any more, you can see everything,” he said. “You can watch everyone’s training on YouTube. There’s no value in doing that sort of thing, absolutely zero.” Saturday’s semifinal
opponents New Zealand and tournament officials are unlikely to take much notice of Jones’s latest claims, particularly as he made an almost word-for-word accusation ahead of the Six Nations in January.
Jones went into his usual pre-match attack mode on Tuesday when he insisted that New Zealand would be buckling under the pressure of trying to retain the World Cup, while his England team had nothing to lose in their eagerly awaited semifinal.
It is well-trodden ground for Jones, who loves to toss in a verbal handgrenade to stir things up before big games – and Saturday’s semifinal at Yokohama is obviously the biggest of his four-year tenure.
“New Zealand will be thinking about their ‘threepeat’. They talk about walking towards the pressure but this week the pressure is going to be chasing them down the street.” Jones said he didn’t necessarily feel the pressure
would make them vulnerable but insisted it was something they would have to address.
“The busiest bloke in Tokyo this week will be Gilbert Enoke, their mental skills coach. They have to deal with all this pressure of winning the World Cup three times and it is potentially the last game for their greatest coach and they will be thinking about those things,” he said.
With England having won only one of their past 16 games against the All Blacks, it is hardly surprising that Jones has been somewhat obsessing about them since the World Cup draw was made two-and-a-half years ago and their semifinal destiny became likely.
The teams have met only once since Jones took over, when the All Blacks won 16-15 at Twickenham a year ago after a late match-winning try for England was controversially ruled out.
“We trialed some things in November against them and we can do things a little bit better in this game and now we have the opportunity to do it,” Jones said.
“In the first meeting we had with the players (after taking over), we said we wanted to be the world’s best team. You could see the ability was there, we just needed to change a few things, change the way we train, the way we play, the way we think. We have progressively done that over four years, and we have put ourselves in a good position at this World Cup now.” Jones also addressed what he considers the fickle nature of the coverage of his team, saying that after the Argentina game “I was going to get sacked, Owen (Farrell) couldn’t kick and there was going to be blood on the walls at Twickenham. Now we’re 80 minutes away from a World Cup semifinal.
“If you look at what we’ve done as a team over the last four years, we’ve had some great wins, we’ve had some significant losses,” he said. “We’ve learnt from those and there is a togetherness in this team that will carry them through.
“In a semifinal there will be big moments that will decide the game. I think we are well equipped to handle those moments,” Jones said.
All Blacks captain Kieran Read skipped training on Tuesday ahead of their Rugby World Cup semifinal due to a sore calf muscle, but coach Steve Hansen was “100%” certain he would face England.
The 33-year-old Read, who has battled back into superb form after recovering from back surgery at the end of 2017, has kept up his fitness in the gym.
“There is no issue. You didn’t see him train because he was in the gym on the bike,” Hansen told reporters on Tuesday. “He got a tight calf from the game the other day and we didn’t want to put him out on a wet track.” Asked whether he was confident Read would be fit for the showdown with Eddie Jones’s team, Hansen was definite. “Yeah, 100%,” he said. Hansen, however, added that loose forward Matt Todd would not be considered for the game as he was still recovering from a sore shoulder sustained in the 46-14 victory over Ireland in the quarter-final.
Todd, who dislocated the shoulder before the tournament and missed the opening game against South Africa, reeled away from a tackle on Saturday holding his left shoulder.
“He is making good progress but not fast enough so he won’t be available,” Hansen added. “He should be right if we are lucky enough to play another game next week.” Lock Sam Whitelock, however, indicated that the team thought Read’s absence was not at all due to the injury.
“A bit of the banter around the team is that he didn’t want to get wet today,” Whitelock said. “I’m sure he’ll be fine. He’s a tough man, he just didn’t want to get wet.” While the All Blacks appeared confident about Read’s participation on Saturday, they have deliberately downplayed news of injuries in the past.