Relax, then get ready to explode!
IT’S been an eventful journey with the occasional detour but England are in a very good place ahead of a home World Cup.
They have nothing and nobody to fear and are well capable of winning the tournament. Stuart Lancaster and his team should be hugely excited — they will never get another chance like this to do something special on the world stage.
It’s taken a while but on Saturday against Ireland we saw their starting XV and that, barring injuries, is the side that should start against Fiji. What they must do now is ease right off the physical work — there is no more conditioning they can usefully do — and prepare to explode out of the blocks with a spectacular performance that will make a statement to the world, in particular the other big players in their pool. The next 11 days is where home advantage should kick in. England play well at Twickenham and are clearly very comfortable with their base at Pennyhill Park so prepare exactly as if this was a normal Test at home. Players can go home and do everything as normal. Now is not the time for anything new, no gimmicks. Fiji is just the next game and do not get carried away with the build-up to the World Cup.
Spend time at home, comfortable in the knowledge that your next opponents are staying in a strange hotel, probably sharing a room with a team-mate, training in different surroundings, with distractions.
From now on it’s the brain that needs exercising. Stay sharp, go through everything in the classroom, just walk through all your set plays and focus on beating a very talented Fiji side.
Distractions will be around every corner. Family, sponsors, media, friends you have not heard from for years will appear on every corner. But the real winners are those individuals who can handle this with zero fuss, knowing nothing must get in the way of the big prize.
Sportsmen love the ‘one game at a time’ cliche. I prefer the golfing variation of one shot at a time. Assess the shot, examine the challenge, take all other factors into account, and then determine what you want to achieve and how you are going to achieve it. Execute and then move on to the next shot.
The Fijians will pose a threat but this is a huge opportunity for England to unite the country behind them. England look very fit and on an upward curve. They also seemed more relaxed against Ireland and their body language was positive.
Saturday wasn’t perfect but there was an energy and focus I enjoyed and important combinations are beginning to click. We have waited to see Brad Barritt and Jonathan Joseph as a starting combination at centre and I was impressed.
I thought watching live that Barritt was good but with the benefit of a second look I would upgrade that to excellent. He really does get through a ton of work and is integral to the defensive system. He seemed also to strike up a nice relationship with Joseph and the only weakness I can detect is their limited kicking game.
The good news for England in that respect is that Mike Brown is hitting his straps again and he is a very capable leftfooted kicker who can share that load with George Ford.
The lineout worked better than in Paris and the scrum was more secure. Off the back of that we saw Tom Wood, Chris Robshaw and Ben Morgan as a much more effective unit going forward. There were other little things I liked. Both Ford and Owen Farrell were striking their place kicks well. The reality is that you will never win a World Cup without your goalkicker being in top form. That is why I have always said that as wonderful as Jonny Wilkinson was in 2003 we would still have won the World Cup if he had got injured because Paul Grayson was there to kick the same goals.
England have also arrived at this stage without any calamitous injuries. You only have to look over the border in Wales and sense the gloom that descended on a nation on Saturday night to realise how difficult late injuries can be.
Wales, however, will still be ultracompetitive if Leigh Halfpenny and Rhys Webb are ruled out. Liam Williams is a gifted full-back and they have a bevvy of talented young scrum-halves with the option also of recalling Mike Phillips. James Hook is another talent who could come back into the reckoning.
What they will miss is the world- class goalkicking of Halfpenny. Dan Biggar is a cracking kicker but Halfpenny’s absence will crank the pressure up on him.
Every rugby fan will feel for Wales. The World Cup is our gathering of the very best and they deserve to be there.
But in Warren Gatland and Shaun Edwards, Wales have two of the most experienced coaches in the game. If anybody can find a way of absorbing such a double blow, it is them.