Jamie George has warned that England must not be seduced by the All Blacks\u2019 mystique if they are to clinch a first Twickenham win against New Zealand in 13 years on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Steve Borthwick has been boosted before the toughest assignment of England\u2019s autumn campaign with the return to fitness of Elliot Daly, who could make his first appearance since fracturing an arm on British & Irish Lions duty, while Freddie Steward and Tom Roebuck have also been named in the 37-man squad.<\/p>\n
England will host the All Blacks after extending their winning run<\/a> to nine matches with victory against Fiji, again romping clear in the final quarter, chalking up a 38-18 win. Their present form is in stark contrast to that of 12 months ago when England were mired in a run of six defeats in seven games, all by narrow margins. Three of those losses were inflicted by New Zealand \u2013 two on the 2024 summer tour before a 24\u201122 defeat at Twickenham after George Ford missed two late kicks at goal.<\/p>\n New Zealand edged out Scotland<\/a> on Saturday to keep alive the All Blacks\u2019 hopes of a home nations grand slam and, though the Springboks cemented their spot at the top of the rankings by beating France, George has heralded New Zealand as \u201carguably the best side in the world\u201d. Of the past 11 meetings, England\u2019s only win against New Zealand came in the 2019 World Cup semi-final and the All Blacks have not been beaten in the past five games at Twickenham.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat a lot of teams do is sit back in awe of the All Blacks with their history and all their incredible players,\u201d George said. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to do that. I\u2019ve probably done it. We\u2019ve also got to be aware we\u2019ll be back here at Allianz Stadium. We\u2019re very proud to be playing here. We are going to do everything we can to win that game.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to be at your best. New Zealand are arguably the best side in the world at the minute. They\u2019re an unbelievably fantastic team and they seem to step up a gear when they come to Allianz Stadium.<\/p>\n \u201cThe important thing for us to do is work out where we could have been better in the first half this week. But also have a clear gameplan which can put them under as much pressure as we possibly can. If we do that, we\u2019ll give ourselves a chance.<\/p>\n \u201cWe came under a bit of heat 12 months ago for not coming out on the right side of tight games and not finding a way to win. Now we\u2019re doing the exact opposite. By no means have we cracked it. But we\u2019ve placed a big emphasis on the latter stages of games and closing games out. Scoring however many tries in the last quarter of that game is a sign of a good team.\u201d<\/p>\n Borthwick is again expected to make a number of changes to his side with the captain, Maro Itoje, Tom Curry and Ford all expected to return to the starting lineup. Tommy Freeman and Immanuel Feyi\u2011Waboso were both in the wars against Fiji but have been selected in the squad to face the All Blacks.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to challenge ourselves against the best teams and [New Zealand] are one of those best teams,\u201d Borthwick said. \u201cWe\u2019re a young side, we\u2019re developing, I think we\u2019re growing quickly and we\u2019re keen to learn. So I\u2019m sure next week\u2019s going to be a great assessment for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Ben Earl, meanwhile, believes that England\u2019s present ability to pull clear in the closing stages of matches owes much to their three narrow defeats by New Zealand last year. \u201cYou feel battle-hardened, you feel like you\u2019ve got the wounds, you\u2019ve got the scar tissue to learn from those losses, and they hurt at the time,\u201d said Earl, who was named man of the match against Fiji.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I wonder, to a man in the changing room, would we have changed our journey now, with the joy that we\u2019re sometimes enjoying now? I\u2019d be interested to know because I think they\u2019re very, very valuable lessons.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jamie George has warned that England must not be seduced by the All Blacks\u2019 mystique if they are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-560085","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}