England building 'something special' says Brian McDermott after 82-0 Rugby League World Cup win v France
Delighted coach Brian McDermott reckons England’s 82-0 demolition of France shows they are building towards “something special”.
His side’s World Cup semi-final hopes rest on them beating Papua New Guinea next Friday and Samoa losing to Tonga in their final game, both by a big enough margin to wipe out the Pacific nation’s current 62-point advantage on for and against.
Having lost 30-12 to Tonga in their opener, England scored all their points against France in the final 57 minutes, running in 14 tries. It was McDermott’s first win as national boss and he reflected: “We’ve been together for five field sessions so we are building something here.
“There was a little bit of it on show today and the tries we scoffed just before half-time are what we’ve been chasing. I think it’s really positive, if this group is together for a long build up to a tournament we could achieve some special things. Over a short space of time it has been remarkable, really.”
McDermott was “really pleased with how we responded to last week’s result”. He said: “The players deserve a ton of credit because France got beat by a big scoreline last week and we knew they would have been determined - they had a real determination about them.
“I thought we played jittery a little bit, but remained patient and composed. We didn’t score a point until the [23rd] minute - it showed a lot of patience from us and I thought our defensive intent was great.”
The coach added: “Another pleading factor is when the game got tough and we weren’t allowed to score tries for fun, we buckled down and defended and worked hard. The game went through phases when we were on top, but when France made us go through an arm wrestle we didn’t shy away from that. It’s a really good sign. I thought we were white hot and France showed a lot of determination in that first 20.”
McDermott insisted England won’t change tactics next week. “We had to win big and we were able to do that without getting distracted and chasing points,” he stressed. “I don’t think we played hot, everything was measured and inside the game model and most of it was within what we planned to do.
“Whatever the results are next week, we want to finish strong against PNG. If that means we are going home on Sunday night that will be a big disappointment to us, but I am not sure what more we could have done.”