'I could've done better': Leeds Rhinos and England's Mikolaj Oledzki reflects on RLWC2021 debut

Oledzki wasn’t selected for England’s opening win over Samoa, but was among the substitutes when they beat France 42-18 in Bolton on Saturday.

France hit back from 18 points down to trail by six at the break, but England dominated the second half.

Oledzki admitted: “Personally, I was a bit off. The way I played probably wasn’t to my standard and I have got plenty of things to improve on, but it was a dominant scoreboard. “We are building into the quarters and the semis hopefully and the game after that. We had to grind it out, but it was a tough win.”

France scored two tries late in the first half after England had dominated the opening 27 minutes.

“I think we allowed them to do that,” Oledzki said. ”Personally, my tackles were too quick and my wrestle wasn’t quite there.

“I could have done better, as a middle form the bench I want to bring more impact. It was a tough period, that last 20 minutes [before the break], but we came out firing in the second half, really knuckled down and turned the game around.

“We got a dominant scoreboard at the end of it and that’s what it’s all about. These are Test matches and sometimes things don’t go your way, but it was good from us to turn it around and turn it around very well.”

France’s revival coincided with Rhinos signing Justin Sangare’s introduction from the bench. Oledzki is looking forward to being on the same side as the former Toulouse front-rower next season.

He said: “He is a great player, he will be a great addition to the team at Leeds. He had a good game, he ran hard, he is a big guy and he’ll be good for us.”

England will be expected to beat Greece convincingly at Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane on Saturday, but Oledzki warned: “That will be another tough game.”

He said: “Test matches are all tough games, in different ways. They all bring different challenges.

“They played France and gave them a good game, so we will be expecting a tough game, but we’re really excited to get another run out.”

Australia and New Zealand are also unbeaten and Oledzki said the hosts are happy to go under the radar.

“There’s been a lot of talk about Samoa, Australia, New Zealand and not a lot of positive talk about us and how tough as a team we are and how well we can play,” he said.

“But we are all right with that.The results keep coming and hopefully we can build some good momentum going into the knockout games.

“It [round two] wasn’t as pretty as last week’s game, but France are a tough team and they bring a bit of that grub with them.

“Similar to when you play Catalans, they are not nice games. We have things to fix up, but we’ll also look at the good stuff and keep building.”