Eddie Jones has urged England to channel the samurai spirit for their World Cup quarter-final against Australia on Saturday after springing a huge surprise by dropping George Ford and restoring the out-of-sorts Owen Farrell to fly-half.
Jones said Farrell’s form has suffered at the World Cup because of the England captaincy but backed his leader to rediscover his best form against the Wallabies. He revealed he has had to pull Farrell to one side to discuss how focusing too much on the captaincy has affected his performance but in the biggest selection call of his England tenure, Ford has been relegated to the bench.
England go into the match on a six-game winning streak against Australia but this will be their first World Cup knockout match for eight years and of the XV Jones has chosen, only two players have experience of starting a World Cup quarter-final with Ben Youngs and Manu Tuilagi the only survivors from the last-eight defeat by France in 2011. “It’s do-or-die time,” said Jones. “Every time the samurais fought, one lived and one died. It will be the same on Saturday: someone is going to live and someone is going to die. That’s what the game is about and that’s the excitement of the game. You get the best eight teams, all playing for their lives.
“The great thing about the World Cup is that every game is a knockout. No one has won a World Cup after losing a game and there’s a reason for that. That’s what I enjoy so much about a World Cup.”
After England’s last match – the 39‑10 victory over Argentina 12 days ago – the attack coach, Scott Wisemantel, revealed Farrell had described his own performance as clunky, having missed four consecutive kicks at goal in the first half. Ford, on the other hand, has been among the standout players of the World Cup and has outshone Farrell since Jones rekindled their 10-12 partnership over the summer. But in a move that echoes England’s disastrous 2015 campaign, when Stuart Lancaster in effect made the same call for the defeat by Wales, Ford has been relegated to the bench with Farrell getting the nod for the No 10 jersey. As a result, Tuilagi switches to inside-centre with Henry Slade coming in for his first start of the tournament in the No 13 jersey.
“[Owen’s] ability to delegate, to know what to say to players is a challenging experience for a young guy like him,” said Jones. “He’s coping with it really well. I feel like sometimes, maybe earlier in the tournament, he spent too much time in the captaincy area and not enough on his own individual prep but I’ve seen a real change in that this week.
“You get all the family issues. You go to the dinner table, one brother is happy, one brother is unhappy. Someone doesn’t know if they are happy or not. He’s the father of that group, so to speak.”
Farrell has been picked at fly-half once in England’s past six matches – the World Cup warm-up victory over Italy last month. The last time Tuilagi and Slade started outside him was the 38-38 draw with Scotland during this year’s Six Nations, when England let a 31-7 lead slip. Farrell was replaced in the latter stages – by Ford, who scored the levelling try and conversion – a performance that raised questions over whether he was overburdened with too much responsibility.
“He’s got quite a big job for us,” said Jones. “He’s captain and he’s goal-kicker. The responsibility of being captain at the World Cup is much larger than normal Test matches, because you’re bringing a group of 31 players together for eight or nine weeks.”
Asked about Jones telling him he needed to focus more on his own performances, Farrell said: “It’s just checking on me, making sure I am doing that, making sure that you’re not getting caught up in other things and making sure it is about doing all you can to play your best at the weekend.”
Australia have also made unexpected changes to their starting XV with the 19-year-old Jordan Petaia preferred at outside-centre to James O’Connor. Petaia has won two caps, both on the wing, having made his debut against Uruguay less than two weeks ago, and Jones questioned how well the teenager will handle the occasion. He has previous for questioning opponents’ ability to cope with pressure after claiming Wales would have doubts over Rhys Patchell before England’s narrow Six Nations victory in 2018.
“[Petaia is] a handy player,” Jones said. “I’ve seen enough of him to know he can play a bit, but it’s going to be a big occasion for the boy. He’s playing a quarter-final in front of 40,000 people in Oita where you know that you don’t get another day. This is the day and for a young player you can either rise to the occasion or you can find it difficult, and I don’t know his mindset but if Michael [Cheika] picks him then we’d anticipate that he’s ready to play.”
