A career trajectory of Bradford to Canberra – via the south of France – is probably far from the one Elliott Whitehead expected to have taken by the age of 27, but it has certainly reaped plenty of rewards for the England forward.
Whitehead opted to leave his hometown club three years ago to become the second Englishman to cross the Channel and play for Catalans Dragons. His time there earned him an England call-up and a move to the NRL last year with Canberra.
To say Whitehead impressed during his first year in Australia would be something of an understatement. He was on the pitch more than anyone else in the competition, being off two minutes all season. As he prepares to face the Kangaroos on Sunday in a game England must win to stand any chance of reaching the Four Nations final, Whitehead remains defiant despite knowing they must do something no England side has done for more than two decades: beat Australia.
“Of course we’re capable of beating them,” he said. “We’ve got some of the best players in the world. It’s fair to say we haven’t performed so far as we’ve been patchy and this week we need to have a full 80-minute performance in us.
“Hopefully we can get it right. They’ll look at our video, Australia, and see some of the things we’ve done and they will be scared.
“We’ve got some great players who do some real off-the-cuff stuff. You’ve got Sam Burgess and James Graham, two of the best in the world – I can’t see why our pack can’t handle theirs.”
Whitehead – along with his Canberra and England team-mate Josh Hodgson – came desperately close to making the NRL Grand Final and the 27-year-old believes the big-game experience that came from reaching the play-off semi-finals will help the national side at the London Stadium on Sunday, where a crowd of around 35,000 is expected.
“Playing for the Raiders in those big games this year will help massively,” he said. “Me and Josh actually spoke about it; coming close over there we talked about how we need to complete to be competitive – we’ve learned that if you don’t do that in the NRL, you will struggle.
“My first year at Canberra definitely exceeded my expectations. I knew that I’d need to work hard to get a spot and keep it, and for me to keep it all year and play nearly every minute of the season, I felt like I went pretty well for them.
“ A lot of people doubted me when I wanted to leave Bradford and I got some stick for it, but Catalans was a great move for me. I got my opportunity to play in the NRL and fulfil a life’s dream off the back of that and it’s worked really well for me.”
Not since the opening game of the 1995 World Cup have England beaten Australia – Great Britain last beat them in 2006 – and as a dyed-in-the-wool rugby league fan Whitehead is acutely aware of what victory would represent. “It would have a massive impact for the country,” he said. “We want everyone to get behind us and we’ll show we are capable when it matters.”
Whitehead will keep his place in the back row, but there are a number of other changes. Wayne Bennett has surprisingly selected the Widnes captain, Kevin Brown, who did not feature in England’s first two games of the tournament and he is expected to feature in a new half-back pairing with Gareth Widdop, who missed last Saturday’s game against Scotland. James Graham will replace the prop Scott Taylor in the starting 13.
Tyson Frizell, who played for Wales in the 2013 World Cup, has been recalled by Australia to start on the bench, while, as expected, Cooper Cronk and Josh Dugan are in the starting line-up. All three did not play in last Saturday’s 14-8 win over New Zealand.
