BRIAN McDERMOTT believes England’s display against France was “enormous” as they kept their faint World Cup semi-final hopes alive with an 82-0 victory in Perth.
After a tight start to the game on the back of last weekend’s defeat to Tonga in Western Australia, the floodgates opened from the 23rd minute onwards, with Herbie Farnworth and Dom Young both claiming hat-tricks, and Mikey Lewis bagging a second-half brace.
Matty Ashton, George Williams, Victor Radley, Jez Litten, Jack Welsby and AJ Brimson were also among the scorers, but more of the same will be required against Papua New Guinea in Wollongong next Friday, as well as relying on Tonga beating Samoa in Parramatta.
“Given the context, I think what we’ve done today is just enormous,” McDermott said.
“Knowing that we had to win big, we all had some candid conversations this week about what that actually means and what it would look like.
“We were able to do that without getting distracted and chasing points. I don’t think we played hot; there weren’t moments when you thought an offload was risky. Everything was inside the game model and what we planned to do.
“Whatever the results are next week, we want to finish strong against PNG. If we go home next Sunday then that’ll be a big disappointment, but I don’t know what else we could’ve done.
“The players deserve a tonne of credit. France got beaten by a big scoreline last week, so they came out of the blocks with a real determination about them. We played a bit jittery, but remained patient and remained composed.
“We found our groove after 25 minutes, and we scored three tries back-to-back. Another pleasing factor was, when the game got tough, we weren’t allowed to score for fun; we buckled down and defended.
“We’ve been together for five field sessions, but we’re building something here, and there was a little bit of it on show today. The tries we scored just before half-time is what we’ve been chasing.
“It’ll be really positive if this group can be together for a process or a long build-up; we can achieve some special things. Over a short amount of time, it’s been remarkable. Credit to all of the staff, they’ve been enormous in getting it all together.
“We’ll have a couple of days to recover from this game, and then we’ll start talking about PNG midweek and build it from there.”
