Known as a famous sled, White looked to try and stop Maro Itoje in the first Test, but the former Exeter Chief says Australia won’t fall into England’s trap to get under their skin.
“We will expect the same this weekend, they are coming after us,” said White. “It’s just part of the game. We would aim to start the game more physically up front, but we won’t get caught up in that off-the-ball stuff. We’ll leave that to the guys.
“You have to be careful in those areas with how you retaliate. At the Genge I was asked to calm down when I thought I was getting quite measured and you saw what happened and the penalty went the other way. Of course you don’t want to that someone is running in, but there is quite a bit of whining.
“Like I said, we’re not going with that. In the end it’s a game of rugby and all that matters is who wins. We know there’s going to be quite a bit of trouble. That was in the first two games and it will happen again in this game, but we will do our best to focus on the rugby side.”
The irony of an Australian complaining about sledding and clumsy antics was not lost on England captain Courtney Lawes, who laughed off the suggestion that it was part of a premeditated strategy. “We don’t really do that,” Lawes said. “I think in general we just excite them because they don’t like us. Luckily I’m a skipper and haven’t heard anything about attempts to wind them up. We really just want to focus on ourselves and play our game and we kind of talk about not getting turned on by them, so that’s kind of funny he said that. It’s quite ironic.
“Guys can get pretty excited for the games. I’m not going to sit here and lie to you and tell you we won’t do anything if we do, but we haven’t talked about trying to turn them on. Guys are nice to it and guys are nice to it and sometimes emotions come over and you do crazy things. On both occasions it was looked at, discovered and the appropriate punishment was imposed.”