Rugby World Cup 2015: Wallabies keen to avoid the hype as they plot end to England’s campaign
FITTINGLY given their potential to crush England’s Rugby World Cup dream, the Wallabies have embraced a Public Enemy lyric: don’t believe the hype.
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FITTINGLY given their potential to crush England’s Rugby World Cup dream on Sunday, the Wallabies appear to have embraced a Public Enemy lyric: don’t believe the hype.
No sooner had Australia finished rattling up a mammoth 65-3 victory over Uruguay than the Wallabies en masse began talking down the mega-match against England at Twickenham.
After the hosts’ loss to Wales on Sunday morning, an Australian victory will likely spell the end for England and their hopes of progression from the pool stages to the finals.
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The scale of that unprecedented calamity has not been lost on a nation who has been building up to this tournament for four years. English papers were overflowing with hand-wringing and concern, and piling on pressure on their captain Chris Robshaw and coach Stuart Lancaster.
The Wallabies are very clearly attempting to stay right out of the way and let the blowtorch apply to one side of the encounter.
Speaking after their win over Uruguay, players said they’d only watched glimpses of the England-Wales game — if at all — and showing sidesteps that Israel Folau would be proud of, the Wallabies played down questions about the intense hype that would be flying around London this week.
Asked about the pressure on England, winger Drew Mitchell said: “To be honest we won’t really buy into any of that sort of stuff. ”
“I think for us there’s been a really strong push from the coaching staff, led by Michael Cheika, about focusing on our next task,” Mitchell continued.
“I think it’s important that we enjoy tonight. We just won a Test match and we’ll do that. We’ll start again tomorrow morning with a bit of review and recovery and some training starting tomorrow. We’ll start preparing for the next opposition then. but I don’t think we’ll buy into too much of that external stuff. ”
Dean Mumm, who captained the Wallabies against Uruguay, echoed Mitchell.
“We’ve spoken about focusing on what we do,” Mumm said.
“You don’t take that as a way of avoiding the hype, it exists in the context of what it is. Rightly so our focus needs to be internal and solely on us and more importantly on improving so that we can put ourselves in a position to get the win. We know we need to improve that and that will be our focus during the week.
“I think we always knew this was going to be a big game and the lead up in terms of where we were in Bath was going to be different to downtown London. But it was always going to be big. The context might have changed, but our focus is on ourselves and the improvements we have to make. That hasn’t changed and we know we have to be better as we go into what is a really important match. Regardless of where we are, that’s where our focus is.”
Halfback Nick Phipps said “the boys were so focused on today (Uruguay) we didn’t pay a huge amount of attention” to England’s loss.
“We will review how we played today and down the track we will have a look at them. We will be more internally focused, as we always are,” Phipps said.
Wallabies coach Michael Cheika declined to give an opinion on England’s effort after the Uruguay match but repeated his view that Australia would have to follow in the footsteps of every other World Cup winner and not lose a game at the tournament.
“Our plan is not to have to scrounge through. We want to play well in every game and let the results take care of themselves. We are not sitting in front of the TV barracking for one team. We are only looking at our own game and how we can improve,” Cheika said.
“We are going to have to improve on the first two matches to be able to compete with England. England are the home team and they are going to be the favourites.”
Originally published as Rugby World Cup 2015: Wallabies keen to avoid the hype as they plot end to England’s campaign
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