Jamie George 'absolutely' believes England can be title contenders
New Test-level skipper Jamie George isn’t writing off his England team’s chances of winning the 2024 Guinness Six Nations. The English have won the two most recent tournaments played after a Rugby World Cup, being crowned champions in 2016 and again in 2020.
Having finished as bronze medal winners at France 2023, a level of optimism existed about England’s championship chances. They were poor, however, in their round-one win away to Italy, coming from being behind at the interval to eventually win 27-24 without managing a for-try bonus point.
Their blunt display contrasted negatively with the sparkle exhibited by Ireland in their mauling of France in Marseille and Andy Farrell’s side will now be heavily tipped to win back-to-back Grand Slams for the first time in Irish rugby history.
England will host Ireland at Twickenham in round four. Before that, they will pick up the driftwood of their underwhelming efforts in Rome by taking on Wales next Saturday where a win would leave them two from two on the table and add to George’s belief that his England team are title contenders.
Asked if England are capable of battling Ireland and winning trophies, the hooker said: “Absolutely. I don’t want anyone to be involved in this squad if they don’t genuinely believe that we can go and challenge the best and win this tournament.
“Looking at Ireland, they were very impressive. Not many teams go to France and perform like that. It’s a blueprint for us, and any team, to look at how they approached that game.
“France will be disappointed with how they played but for us, we are going to be learning fast and we need to make sure we learn our lessons and be very clear about what we want to go after next week.
“We have got a great opportunity to be back in front of our fans against Wales next weekend and really give them something to smile about.”
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They also use a far more consistent scale.
Rugby pass seem to have a different scale for each player based on the authors expectations or how much he likes them.
Can't fathom how Moodie and Reece both were a 3.
Go to commentsYes for sure, thanks for sharing. I fully understand that both parties are better off, no one needs to lose, neither competition suffers, in fact both can be better as a result.
Too many true rugby fans (and analysts) don't understand that.
I wouldn't imagine there is a date aye. It was a long decline rugby in SA and Australia was going through, and was so bad it even effected NZ, caused them to argue to can a couple of teams. The nation of SA probably grew into it? I know I watch more of the NH now specifically because of the SR teams playing there. I actually had to mention to Nick Bishop (because of his stubborn perspective) the other day that I've never been a fan of Super Rugby, I don't think they chose the right way to go about professionalism back in 1995. Unfortunately, NZR was stuck between a rock and a hard place, because it had SA's and Australians that ran their unions by States, so we had to separate into "two or three" teams as a result. Our game is in the kak now because of it, they want to kill off the lifeblood of our National Provincial Championship. But now we might see a way out of it, so it's all good.
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