England’s players say they want to make a statement to the rest of world rugby by remaining unbeaten for a full calendar year for the first time in 24 years. Four autumn victories will complete a perfect 100% haul of 12 wins under Eddie Jones in 2016 and extend the team’s victorious streak to 13 Tests in total.
While the all-time record for successive English wins stands at 14, no red rose squad has completed a full year unbeaten since 1992 when the national team played only six fixtures, four of them on home soil. Among those involved in last year’s World Cup, where England failed to survive the pool phases, there is a particular determination to finish with a flourish.
Mike Brown believes it would also make England’s rivals sit up and pay serious attention, given the team have already won a Six Nations grand slam and achieved an unprecedented 3-0 series triumph in Australia in June. “We want to win every game and we believe we can do that,” stressed the Harlequins full-back, well aware England have not beaten South Africa since 2006. “It would be amazing but we are just focused on our next game, which is South Africa. That will be a huge challenge – we haven’t beaten them for so long and no one in our squad has ever beaten them. Eddie is looking at the bigger picture but we are all fully focused on that first game.”
Brown, even so, concedes Jones’s England would send out a significant message if their winning sequence can be maintained. “I think we are building some sort of aura,” said Brown, who has won 52 caps for his country. “Teams can see what we are about and there is still so much more we can achieve.
“It’s great if, externally, we build something and people realise we are here but in the squad it just builds confidence and keeps pushing us forward towards the ultimate prize, which is being No1 in the world and winning World Cups.”
England will certainly face South Africa, Fiji, Argentina and Australia on successive Twickenham Saturdays, with their confidence unrecognisable from the latter days of the World Cup, a gloomy period that Brown and others would love to replace with more positive memories. “Yeah, of course, and it would be good for the journey we are on,” said Brown, asked if an unbeaten year would help ease last year’s frustrations. “If we keep getting better and getting the wins, then those things will take care of themselves. Whenever you are part of a team that keeps winning, you do get on a roll. It is massively important to keep momentum in sport, so that is what we want to do.’”
Even England’s World Cup winners of 2003 did not complete a calendar year unbeaten, as they lost to France in an August warm-up game in Marseille, bringing to an end a 14-game sequence that had commenced in March 2002. Since the second world war England have won all their games in a calendar year only three times – in 1957, 1980 and 1992 – and never before in the professional era.
Brown, either way, is expecting a vigorous reaction from the Springboks to their recent 57-15 home defeat by New Zealand in the Rugby Championship. “We are definitely expecting that from them,” he said.
“They will be desperate to change what is going on and there will be no better team to do it against than England on their own patch. They will be massively proud and massively emotional. We will be fully aware of that and we will be fully prepared. For us, it is about having a massive focus on that first 20 minutes. We have to front up physically and emotionally.”
