Courtney Lawes revealed that Australian trash talk prompted England to claim the Ella Mobbs Cup, with the captain leading a defensive rear guard in the 21-17 victory at the Sydney cricket ground.
Efforts by the excellent Freddie Steward and half Marcus Smith flying out of Owen Farrell’s boot with 11 points provided enough buffer for England to hold off an Australian battle. After losing the opening test in Perth, England fought back to level the series in Brisbane before digging deep to secure consecutive series wins in Australia under head coach Eddie Jones.
The series is marked by a lot of niggle with Australian players publicly displaying the behavior of Jonny Hill in the second row and support Ellis Genge, while wing Suliasi Vunivalu spoke of “closing the Pommies” this week. Those comments only served to give Lawes even more motivation to rally his troops at the end of what he described as the “longest season.”
“We just stayed in it,” Lawes said. “We fought for each other… I mean, they give us a good dose of fuel in the press to be honest. They were talking about us. We saw a lot of stuff in their players’ press and what they said – some people targeted Gengey and some people called us Poms and some didn’t. It’s all good fuel for our tank and any good team uses that as motivation I think.
“That motivated us a little bit, but the guys stuck together, held on to our guns. Unfortunately we didn’t fire that many shots tonight, but we found a way to win. That is the big improvement.”
Jones again showed his ruthless side in replacing scrum half Danny Care at 37 minutes in a tactical substitution. In Australia’s last series win, Jones also replaced Luther Burrell and Teimana Harrison in the first half.
“It was tactical, we would always use the two for 80, like I said, so that’s not unusual,” Jones said. Asked if it was an early substitute, Jones said: “Not really, you usually go 55-25, so I went 35-45, so it was late I guess. You work it out.”
As England won the 2016 series with a whitewash, Jones seemed to find even more satisfaction in seeing his team come from behind to win the series with a squad made up of five players making their debut.
“This was harder,” Jones said. “We had a more established team in 2016 that came on the back of the Grand Slam and on the back of a 2015 [World Cup] team. We cherish this team at the moment, we have a good group of older players and we got all these guys, so it was a very different experience.
“The last 20 minutes we have six guys with less than 10 caps, but their contribution to the team has been excellent throughout the tour. We had to fight like everything today, we stayed there, we weren’t at our best, which happens sometimes, that’s rugby, and when you fight like that and win a game like that, that’s a great achievement for the team. All credit goes to the leaders group.”
As the squad now flies home, Jones and his coaching staff are now heading to Melbourne for a week-long gathering of information from Aussies Rules and the Storm rugby league team.
“It’s great for us that we can spend a week there and try to improve our coaching,” Jones said. “We want to get better as a coach. We always ask players to get better and better, so we have to be role models, so we’re going to have a good week down there.
“I think the AFL in particular is very good at communicating with their players. They have them for 24 weeks, so they have to keep the message fresh and understand the relationships. And Melbourne Storm is the strongest team I’ve ever seen, so we can always learn from them.”