Ex-Leeds Rhinos boss Brian McDermott keen to stay on as England coach: admits win v PNG 'felt like a loss'

McDermott admitted today’s (Friday) 34-12 win against Papua New Guinea in England’s last group game “feels like we lost” as they failed to run up a big enough score to remain in the tournament. They led 22-0 after as many minutes, but managed only two tries over the final hour and were outscored in the second half.

McDermott’s men aren’t mathematically out of the semi-final picture, but will only qualify if Samoa lose by 46 points or more to Tonga on Sunday. The coach’s contract was for this tournament only and asked if he has spoken to the RFL about continuing in the role, he said: “I keep ringing them, but they won’t answer the phone!

“I haven’t talked to anybody about that, let’s get this job out of the way. There’s enough time to talk about that. I have made it public and I’ll say again, I’d like to do the job and have a four-year plan in place for the next World Cup, which is how it should be.

“I am really excited by that. If we can do what we’ve done over the last three weeks, if we can put that into a plan for the next four years, that would be good.”

Reflecting on England’s time in Australia, McDermott stressed: “I am immensely proud. It has been really enjoyable, working with men who are completely focused and committed and so driven and the staff have been great as well.

“The NRL players joining the UK boys is something I thought we might need to address, but it has been so easy. Some of the senior boys in the camp have been great, George [Williams] as captain has been great.

“It has been great working with them all and I feel we have made a load of progressions as a group, certainly without our point of difference in attack. I thought we looked sharp in the first 20-25 minutes [today] and in terms of defence and commitment to each other we were great as well, throughout the whole game. There’s loads to be positive about and pleased with, but we’re sat here talking like we’ve lost the game because of the nature of the competition.”

Of the match itself, McDermott added: “I’m disappointed it looks like we are going out of the tournament with that scoreline. That second half got scrappy, the game lost its flow after about 25 minutes and I don’t think that was to do with anything we were doing.

“It was a really difficult situation to find ourselves in in the second half. If all we had to do was win the game I reckon we would have handled the nature of the second half a lot better.

“You just kick the ball long, defend a couple of sets and keep hold of possession for a while, but we had to score 60 points - that was the narrative and it has been for two weeks.”