Stuart Lancaster says his England team are “100% ready” for the World Cup and will pose a genuine title threat on home soil if they can tighten up their defence. With the tournament kicking off on Friday week, Lancaster also believes no visiting nation will find it easy to win at Twickenham.
Saturday’s 21-13 victory over Ireland has extended England’s unbeaten home run to seven matches, with all their major pool games being staged at their 82,000-seater stadium. Lancaster suspects the tournament will be the most open in history and hopes the Twickenham factor will lend his squad a decisive edge.
“With the Twickenham crowd behind us I think we’ll be a difficult side to beat,” insisted Lancaster, happy with the way his team bounced back from last month’s disappointing effort against France in Paris. “We’re 100% ready … we’ve been waiting for this for four years.
“We’ve got a very good win ratio at home and confidence is built from consistently playing well. Day in, day out I can see us defending and attacking well against each other in training. It’s just about putting all those bits and pieces together for the full 80 minutes for seven games.”
Lancaster did acknowledge the Ireland win had given all concerned some “breathing space” with the tournament now only days away. This week England have a big send-off party at the O2 on Wednesday – the players will share the limelight with Take That – followed by Saturday’s official World Cup capping ceremony at Sandhurst, but the management are already focusing on their first opponents Fiji.
“We don’t want to get too carried away because we know the threat that’s coming round the corner,” said Lancaster, who was due to spend his Sunday afternoon watching Fiji’s warm-up game against Canada at the Twickenham Stoop. “We’re not jumping up and down because we know the real business starts a week on Friday. With the build-up that’s going to ensue over the next two weeks, we’ve got to make sure we don’t play the game too early.”
He has also been absorbing the lessons of previous World Cups, where preventing tries has often been as crucial as scoring them. “The teams that win World Cups are the teams with the best defences,” confirmed Lancaster.
“You can’t be conceding 20-30 points and expect to be winning World Cups. To win it you’ve also got to win seven big games on the bounce. For us, because of the pool we’re in, it’s effectively the quarter-final stage from game one. France got to the final in 2011 by losing two pool games, so it is achievable, but I think everyone wants consistency.”
Lancaster and his coaches will finalise their starting XV for the Fiji game over the course of the next week but Tom Wood, Ben Morgan, Geoff Parling, Jonny May, and George Ford all advanced their claims against the Irish.
The hooker Tom Youngs, however, has made clear England’s players are still hungry for more. “There’s no way we’re just sitting back, we haven’t just done all this hard work for nothing. I don’t see why we can’t win the World Cup. We’ll try to go out there, win every game and go for it.”
Brad Barritt was also encouraged by the Ireland result. “It’s definitely the way we want to play in terms of having an up-tempo game,” the centre said.
“We’ve got a fantastic squad that can pull the best out of each other, and we want to be the best defensive team in the world. If you have those two aspects in the World Cup they can be a very powerful force.”
