Comment by Matt Turner
If you still haven’t tuned in to this riveting Rugby League World Cup, Saturday is the time to change that.
Two games – England v New Zealand and Australia v Fiji – one venue –Wembley Stadium – one goal: a place in the tournament’s grand finale at Old Trafford a week on Saturday.
All four teams enjoyed relatively comfortable quarter-finals but the semis, branded “The Big Hit” by the RFL bosses, will be anything but comfortable, particularly for England.
They face a New Zealand side that are undoubtedly the form side in the competition so far, winning all four games with staggering ease.
England have been pretty water-tight in defence, conceding only three tries in their last three games following defeat in their first game against Australia, but keeping out the Kiwis will be an entirely different proposition.
They have scored an extraordinary 34 tries in their four games so far and they boast three of the top ten try scorers in the tournament: Roger Tuivasa-Sheck (6), Manu Vatuvei and Bryson Goodwin (4 each)
As well as this, they have the tournament’s most prolific goal-kicker (Shaun Johnson with 21) and the leading metre-maker (Tuivasa-Sheck with 641).
Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned Sonny Bill Williams yet.
It would seem fairly clear from this that England face an uphill struggle to reach the final, but there are some causes for optimism.
Praising New Zealand for their swashbuckling rugby so far is all well and good, but who have they faced to give them any problems.
Samoa, France, Papa New Guinea and Scotland are hardly top-class opposition and none were expected to make any sort of impact on the competition, so all of a sudden the Kiwis’ record doesn’t look all that impressive.
The only point in which they came under any sort of pressure was during the second half of the game against Samoa, in which they were in real danger of throwing away a commanding lead before eventually holding out to win.
In short, England will provide New Zealand with their first real test of the tournament. But even so, improvement on their showing against France in Wigan on Saturday is imperative.
The England performance on Saturday can be described as average at best, particularly in the second half.
Very much like the games against Ireland and Fiji, England had a 20-minute burst in which they scored several tries (four on Saturday) to effectively win the game by half time.
However, the second half saw England make a worrying amount of handling errors and concede an alarming number of cheap penalties.
As a result, France had several opportunities to attack the England line. We defended well and kept them scoreless in the second half, which is encouraging, but we would surely have been punished by a better side…like New Zealand for example.
Discipline, handling and ruck speed all need to improve drastically if we are to have any chance.
On the point of ruck speed, I would advocate the return of Rob Burrow to the matchday squad for the game in place of Wigan Warriors hooker Michael McIlorum.
Nobody in world rugby brings speed to the play-the-ball quite like he does, except perhaps Isaac Luke of, you guessed it, New Zealand!
If I were Steve McNamara, I would be telling my players to do a couple of simple but vital things on Saturday; complete your sets, apply pressure and tire them out!
A known weakness of New Zealand is their physical conditioning, which Australia have discovered to their benefit several times.
On a wide-open pitch at Wembley, players who can ghost past tiring defenders will be the difference-makers. Luckily, in Sam Tomkins, we have the best in the world at doing that!
Either way, it should be a superb game to watch. Two genuine contenders going head-to-head with world class on either side.
Of the top five wingers in world rugby right now, I think four of them will be on display in this game; Josh Charnley and Ryan Hall for England, Tuivasa-Sheck and Vatuvei for the Kiwis.
Up front, the likes of James Graham and the Burgess brothers locking horns with Frank Pritchard, Jesse Bromwich and Sam Moa is a frightening prospect.
So, if you haven’t yet woken up to the Rugby League World Cup, do so now! It’s about to get tasty!
