Regardless of the composition of England’s starting XV against Australia on Saturday there is no avoiding one pivotal individual. The touring team have not forgotten their last meeting with the Wallabies during the World Cup pool stages, when their scrum came under conspicuous strain. The same referee – France’s Romain Poite – will be in charge again in Brisbane on Saturday.
Poite is renowned for his firm-handed adjudication of the scrummage, but England still feel aggrieved at how Joe Marler’s technique was singled out for pre-match attention, which they believe influenced the official’s decisions. Marler is sitting out this month’s Test series but his fellow props Dan Cole and Mako Vunipola cannot entirely shake the memory of what Vunipola calls the “good hiding” they received at Twickenham, after which England’s assistant coaches, Andy Farrell and Graham Rowntree, received tunnel bans for remonstrating with Poite at half-time.
Cole, in particular, remains frustrated by the pre-match comments made by the former Wallabies coach Bob Dwyer prior to England’s 33-13 defeat, which condemned them to a premature tournament exit. “You are angry because you see things differently to how they were interpreted,” said Cole. “The way things were portrayed in the newspapers and Bob Dwyer coming out – it loaded the contest in the scrum. There were decisions made in that game which went against us.” So does he still think Dwyer influenced the result by insisting Marler was scrummaging at an illegal angle? “He probably did,” replied the experienced Leicester tighthead.
Last autumn, when he was still coaching Japan, Eddie Jones also singled out the Frenchman as “the sort of referee who, depending on who dominates the first scrum, will tend to favour that scrum for the rest of the game”. Cole, though, is keen to emphasise Australia fully deserved their victory last October, regardless of England’s deficiencies. “They were on fire, very good,” he said. “I remember coming in after the game and thinking: That was probably one of the best Test teams I’ve ever played against. You hold your hands up, we were beaten by the better side. They probably could have gone on and won the World Cup.”
Eight months on, however, Cole believes England’s scrummaging has recovered its edge and will not suffer similar indignities this weekend: “We’re a different scrum now than we were in the World Cup. Yes, there were issues against Australia but we have improved. All the basics of the scrum were revisited. Stripping it down, looking at binding, height, lean, engagement, weight after the engagement, foot position, everything. We’ve worked hard and that showed in the final games of Six Nations.”
It all makes for a different pre-match feel to past Anglo-Australian contests, when England felt they had the close-quarters strength to make life intolerable for their opponents. It did not always pay off – Australia still managed to win in Perth in 2010 despite being pulverised in the scrums – but Vunipola says he and his team-mates now have a sharply-increased respect for the Wallabies pack.
“They gave us a good hiding in that department during the World Cup and we’re going into this Test match knowing we face a massive challenge as a front-row,” said the Saracens player, who has lost just one game for club and country since the tournament. “They have some great individual scrummagers but as a pack they can destroy you. I don’t think this has to do with revenge but as front-rowers we have pride and want to move on. It will be hard to forget the World Cup but that has to go to the back of our minds.”
Vunipola and Cole do have some positive memories of Poite, who took charge of the decisive third Test of the 2013 Lions tour to Australia, and would dearly love a similar outcome on Saturday, regardless of how it is achieved. “We come from a more structured game so we’d be stupid to try and play like the Australians and fling it around because they are quite good at that,” added Cole. “There is no point in coming to Australia and playing like Australia.”
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