England's final thoughts
Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:24
With just a day to go, England manager Martin Johnson has admitted his side will have to pull off one of the great sporting upsets if they are to prevent New Zealand completing a Grand Slam of wins over the home nations at Twickenham on Saturday.
Still smarting from last weekend's 6-42 thrashing by South Africa, Johnson sends his re-shaped side into battle on a mission to restore English pride.
"We have to give our message on the field," he said on the eve of the meeting with the Tri-Nations champions.
"Nobody felt worse about the result last week than the players, who put their heart and soul into it. We don't take those things lightly, it hurt."
The man who captained England to glory in the 2003 World Cup added: "Everything is about attitude. The confidence takes a dent when you get beaten like that. It is our job to get it back up again.
"It is always a tall order to beat the All Blacks. How many Test matches do they lose?
How many do they lose in Britain?
"We are heavy underdogs and there is a reason for that - we got beaten heavily last week and they didn't.
"We have to do things better than they do. We have increased the intensity. We have to translate the pressure on the field onto the scoreboard.
"We need to be in the game after an hour and take the All Blacks to somewhere they haven't been for quite a long while."
If England are to do that, they know they will have to be a lot tighter in defence and slicker in their attacking execution than was the case last weekend.
"We can't leak soft tries, we can't have charge downs, we can't give away silly penalties," Johnson added.
"If there is adversity in the game - if they score, we have to score next. We have to win all those little battles."
AFP
