It always goes down as the game we should have won, if we hadn’t changed our tactics. But when we played Australia we knew they’d put 40 points on us in Sydney a few months earlier. We’d played some very good rugby against them and where they had done really well was out wide. We’d missed a number of tackles on David Campese and he’d scored three tries, but without those tries the scoreline would have been a lot closer. So we thought we needed to play a more fluid game against them. It wasn’t something we were talked into – we spent the whole week working out how we were going to win the game. The consensus afterwards was we’d played all the rugby but we didn’t nail the key moments. Back in the dressing rooms, Australia were almost too exhausted to celebrate. They had literally spent the entire second half defending.
Written by Interviews by Simon Burnton
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/oct/31/england-rugby-world-cup-finals-simon-halliday-phil-vickery-nick-easter under the title “England’s Rugby World Cup finals: the inside story on 1991, 2003 and 2007”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
