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Billy Vunipola reveals the brutal plan England executed to beat the All Blacks
By Online Editors
Billy Vunipola has revealed that England wanted to “shock” the All Blacks in the opening 20 minutes of their unforgettable World Cup semi-final performance.
Centre Manu Tuilagi set the tone with a try after just 97 seconds, and then it was virtually mistake-free rugby during an opening half when England hit new heights under head coach Eddie Jones.
New Zealand ultimately fell to a first World Cup defeat since 2007, ending a run of 18 successive tournament victories as England stormed home 19-7.
“The challenge was either you try to do it to them, or they will do it to you,” England number eight Vunipola said.
“We tried to do that from the get-go, and we did that. It was about trying to shock them.
“Maro (Itoje) and everyone else has said it that we wanted to shock them in the first 20 minutes because that is when they begin their process of wearing teams down.
“We did not want to be one of those teams who were worn down. I thought we did really well from the opening minute.
“They are not the number one team in the world for no reason. They don’t give you easy points. You have to work for everything.
“You have to play in the right area, and I thought our generals were amazing at putting us in the right places and giving us the opportunity to get our breath back.
“Once they have got the ball they will go from anywhere. They are extremely accurate with their skills, and obviously a lot of teams try to base themselves off what they do.
“Like Eddie said when he first came in, we just want to be England. If that means that we are not as good-looking as them, then so be it. We are different. We play our own brand of rugby.
“A lot of people were doubting us because of all the games that we lost to New Zealand. We got written off, and we just wanted to come out and put in a good performance.
“At the start of the week, Eddie wanted us to rewrite history. We have gone one step towards doing that, and we have another game next week.”
England will contest their fourth World Cup final in Yokohama next Saturday and target a second victory following the Jonny Wilkinson-inspired success of 16 years ago.
“It’s awesome (to be in the final). We want to try to win it – that’s our mindset,” Vunipola added.
Vunipola, Tom Curry and Sam Underhill forged a formidable England back-row unit, and all three can now set their sights on challenging for rugby union’s biggest prize.
Curry said: “You have to take the occasion in and not let it pass you by, but control is massive to our game and we have to make sure we deliver that again.
“We don’t want to do a disservice to ourselves because of the occasion. The World Cup is such a fast-moving pace that we have to shift our focus quickly.
“Was there a point when I thought we had them (New Zealand)? Yes, at 80 minutes. When the whistle went, we got them – we had to stay focused for the entire game.
“You can get ahead of yourself, but one of the great things about this team is that it is down to earth. You have to enjoy occasions like this because they don’t come around that often, but we are very good at focusing on the next task.”
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Latest Comments
The only benefit of the draft idea is league competitiveness. There would be absolutely no commercial value in a draft with rugby’s current interest levels.
I wonder what came first in america? I’m assuming it’s commercial aspect just built overtime and was a side effect essentially.
But the idea is not without merit as a goal. The first step towards being able to implement a draft being be creating it’s source of draftees. Where would you have the players come from? NFL uses college, and players of an age around 22 are generally able to step straight into the NFL. Baseball uses School and kids (obviously nowhere near pro level being 3/4 years younger) are sent to minor league clubs for a few years, the equivalent of the Super Rugby academies. I don’t think the latter is possible legally, and probably the most unethical and pointless, so do we create a University scene that builds on and up from the School scene? There is a lot of merit in that and it would tie in much better with our future partners in Japan and America.
Can we used the club scene and dispose of the Super Rugby academies? The benefit of this is that players have no association to their Super side, ie theyre not being drafted elshwere after spending time as a Blues or Chiefs player etc, it removes the negative of investing in a player just to benefit another club. The disadvantage of course is that now the players have nowhere near the quality of coaching and each countries U20s results will suffer (supposedly).
Or are we just doing something really dirty and making a rule that the only players under the age of 22 (that can sign a pro contract..) that a Super side can contract are those that come from the draft? Any player wanting to upgrade from an academy to full contract has to opt into the draft?
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You’ve got the perfect structure to run your 1A and 1B on a quota of club representation by Province. Have some balance/reward system in place to promote and reward competitiveness/excellence. Say each bracket has 12 teams, each province 3 spots, given the Irish Shield winner once of the bottom ranked provinces spots, so the twelve teams that make up 1A are 4 from Leinster, 3 each from Connacht and Munster, and 2 from Ulster etc. Run the same rule over 1B from the 1A reults/winner/bottom team etc. I’d imagine IRFU would want to keep participation to at least two teams from any one province but if not, and there was reason for more flexibility and competitveness, you can simply have other ways to change the numbers, like caps won by each province for the year prior or something.
Then give those clubs sides much bigger incentive to up their game, say instead of using the Pro sides for the British and Irish Cup you had going, it’s these best club sides that get to represent Ireland. There is plenty of interest in semi pro club cup competitions in europe that Ireland can invest in or drive their own creation of.
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