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Confident Itoje fires word of warning to All Blacks

England forward Maro Itoje. (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Maro Itoje is predicting an England win against New Zealand and has “no doubt” that can be achieved if Eddie Jones’s men stick to their game plan at Twickenham tomorrow.

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Itoje became a cult hero on last year’s Lions tour with the chants of travelling supporters bellowing his name ringing around the stadium after the 24-21 second test victory in Wellington. However, discipline has become a problem for the Saracens lock who was yellow carded in the first half of England’s 12-11 win over South Africa.

Itoje will not change his aggressive style and England want him to take the attack to the All Blacks and the athletic lock is bullish heading into the biggest game of England’s November test series.

He told Sky: “They are a team that can be beaten, that has been beaten and lets be crystal clear – we are going out there on Saturday to win and there is no doubt in my mind that if we stick to the game plan we can do just that.

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“New Zealand have more variety in their game and sometimes they want to come through the middle, or around you or attacking space and you have to ready for whatever game plan they come up with. When you are playing a team like New Zealand you have to attack them from the very start of the game and try to impose your game onto them as quickly as possible.”

Having beaten the All Blacks in the red jersey of the Lions and shared the test series, Itoje believes he has a real insight into the challenge he will face tomorrow.

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He added: “Spending about six weeks in New Zealand with the Lions I think I understand fairly well what they are about and it taught me a lot about the way they play.

“Some games are more tastier than others and this week you can tell the boys are really ready to perform. Against South Africa I never felt uncomfortable and at no point did I think ‘sugar we are going to have to try something drastically different’. At no point was it panic stations.”

You may also like: Eddie Jones previews England’s clash against New Zealand

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J
JW 4 hours ago
'Let's not sugarcoat it': Former All Black's urgent call to protect eligibility rules

Yep, no one knows what will happen. Thing is I think (this is me arguing a point here not a random debate with this one) they're better off trialing it now in a controlled environment than waiting to open it up in a knee jerk style reaction to a crumbling organtization and team. They can always stop it again.


The principle idea is that why would players leave just because the door is ajar?


BBBR decides to go but is not good enough to retain the jersey after doing it. NZ no longer need to do what I suggest by paying him to get back upto speed. That is solely a concept of a body that needs to do what I call pick and stick wth players. NZR can't hold onto everyone so they have to choose their BBBRs and if that player comes back from a sabbatical under par it's a priority to get him upto speed as fast as possible because half of his competition has been let go overseas because they can't hold onto them all. Changing eligibility removes that dilemma, if a BBBR isn't playing well you can be assured that someone else is (well the idea is that you can be more assured than if you only selected from domestic players).


So if someone decides they want to go overseas, they better do it with an org than is going to help improve them, otherwise theyre still basically as ineligible as if they would have been scorning a NZ Super side that would have given them the best chance to be an All Black.

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