An ‘inexcusable’ England shortcoming has wound up Jamie George

Seasoned hooker Jamie George believes England are poised for a much-improved performance this weekend at the Rugby World Cup after last Saturday’s pool scare versus Samoa.

Steve Borthwick’s side came within a whisker of being humbled by Samoa, clinging onto an 18-17 courtesy of a last-ditch Danny Care tackle, and much better is now expected when they tackle Fiji in the quarter-finals in Marseille.

“Last weekend wasn’t good enough,” he baldly stated at a post-training media appearance in Aix-en-Provence, England’s base camp for the week leading into their last-eight knockout game.

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“It was poor but we have had a really good open, honest review and it’s very clear some of the stuff wasn’t good enough.

“Our energy levels were poor and that’s probably inexcusable to be completely honest. Would we rather it happened then than now? Yes. Are we going to learn from it? Absolutely. So yeah, you will see a very different England team on Sunday.”

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George’s experience at the 2019 finals in Japan is feeding into his optimism. England defeated Australia in that campaign’s quarter-finals and then dethroned the All Blacks in the semi-finals before losing out to the Springboks in the decider. “I guess it manifests itself from the top down, so Steve (Borthwick) talks about it a lot.

“We’ve got a lot of players who have been there and done that on the big stages, we have players who have experience of World Cup finals, latter stages of World Cup, we have got players who this is their fourth World Cup and we have got a great group of senior players who are very open and honest with the younger players who this could be intimidating for.

“This is why we are here, we want to play on the biggest stages. Quarter-final of a World Cup is exactly where we want to be and next week we want to be in the semi-final and so on.

“It’s exciting times and the more experienced players probably need to draw on those experiences and make sure that everyone is in good spirits going into the weekend.”

George admitted to not handling these big weeks best when he was younger. “You can’t shy away from the fact this is one of the biggest games we are ever going to play in and I don’t think we should shy away from any emotion that comes with that.

“Early on in my career I probably tried to feel a certain way or tried to be perceived to be feeling a certain way or shy away from emotions. I don’t see why you need to do that.

“We have got the space to speak to people, we have got a really open group and if people are nervous then that’s fine, if people are excited that’s fine but the most important thing for us is focusing on going from week to week.

“It’s something we have done really well since we have been in France in particular, we have got clear things that we need to go after in the week and we try and know our opposition as best we can and be really clear what we are going to go through in that week and be as prepared as we can be and when your focus is on that it can be less than the enormity of the occasion.”

"Fantastic, men. Fantastic!"

– England polish their defensive press in Aix-en-Provence ahead of next Sunday's Rugby World Cup quarter-final versus Fiji in nearby Marseille. #ENGvFIJ #EnglandRugby #RWC2023 pic.twitter.com/1hPUz0rXVY

— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) October 11, 2023