'I thought ‘why not?’: England player behind haka challenge speaks out

Jamie George devised England’s defiant challenge to the haka that set the tone for the standout result of the Steve Borthwick era as New Zealand were overrun 33-19 at Allianz Stadium.

On the eve of the match George persuaded head coach Borthwick and captain Maro Itoje to revisit the response to the Maori war-dance issued in the semi-finals of the 2019 World Cup.

Just like in Yokohama, England confronted the All Blacks by fanning out into a V-formation and on this occasion the Twickenham crowd played their role in the spectacle by joining in with ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’.

It was gripping sporting theatre and just like Yokohama, the challenge was followed up with one of the great victories in the nation’s rugby history.

“I had an idea and I thought ‘why not?’ so put it to Maro and Steve and they got on board with it,” said George, who was also the starting hooker six years ago.

“Maro said ‘yes, as long as we don’t have to have too many rehearsals’! We spoke through it on Friday night and you’d be amazed at the amount of questions that I had and how hard it was to form the V.

“You don’t want to get too complicated and have to explain it too much. The theory was that the oldest would be on one side – me – and the youngest would be on the other, so Henry Pollock, with Maro in the middle.

“We were quite reluctant to give it to Henry because we weren’t sure what he was going to get up to.

“We wanted to replicate 2019 because we hadn’t done it at the Allianz, which is something that I always thought would be pretty cool because we speak a lot about of connection with the fans.

“New Zealand’s response to it was also good and I thought it’d be one of those old school sort of Brian Moore days where we’d be face to face.

“Doing something like that is great, but then backing up it with a performance is the most important thing – we did that.”

George was an influential figure in the build up to the first victory over New Zealand at Twickenham since 2012 after also addressing the squad on Thursday with a message of seizing the opportunity to create history.

It was not a flawless performance by England, but George insists the shortcomings can be addressed in the days to come as he urged his team-mates to savour the moment.

“Right now, I honestly couldn’t care less that we lost line-outs. I couldn’t care less that we gave away too many penalties. That’s tomorrow’s problem. The most important thing is that we celebrate this,” he said.

“I learned from the 2019 World Cup semi-final against New Zealand that wins like this take a huge amount of emotion and emotionally drain you.

“A lot of the guys will wake up exhausted with their phones buzzing and everyone telling us how amazing we are. And that’s great – revel in it enjoy it. But keep it in context.”