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England No.8 Ben Earl admits to experiencing the “same overwhelming feeling” after his side’s latest heartbreaking 42-37 near miss against Australia at Allianz Stadium.
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England are determined, however, to make amends after their autumn blues continued with a dramatic defeat by Australia at
World champions South Africa are the daunting assignment facing Steve Borthwick’s men next Saturday as they look to regroup following defeats by New Zealand and the Wallabies, with Japan visiting Twickenham a week later to close the schedule.
A run of five defeats in six matches has been characterised by the squandering of winning positions with the Saturday’s overtime loss to Australia the most dramatic example yet.
“We’re testing fans’ patience, testing our patience. It feels like we won the game twice against Australia and then managed to lose it. Frustrating,” No.8 Ben Earl said.
“Not same old problems, different problems, but the same overwhelming feeling of another game that we’ve let slip. So food for thought.
“It doesn’t feel like it’s a lack of effort, it really doesn’t. It just feels like every game is just throwing up a different scenario that we might not have experienced before as a team.
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“We’ll have to go through some more hurt to find our way through it and maybe, hopefully, look back over the next couple of weeks and months and years, and say that was a really important lesson.
“This team’s always been brilliant at responding when questions have been asked of us and our character. And we need to respond.
“We want to win for our fans. We want to win for ourselves because it’s bit of a tedious feeling coming into the sheds for a second time in consecutive weeks and feeling like it’s another game that was there to win.”
Feyi-Waboso suffered a head injury while trying to prevent Australia from scoring a try in the 50th minute of the 42-37 defeat and has been withdrawn from the 36-man squad that will prepare for the Springboks’ visit to south west London.
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The second loss of England’s Autumn Nations campaign has taken a heavy toll, with Tom Curry already confirmed as unavailable after he was knocked out in the act of making a tackle against the Wallabies.
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It is clear that England are going to have to work on their defending. As in defending against tough questions from the media.
Ben Earl recently discovered that if you pull a really sad, puppy dog face when the final whistle goes, you can disarm the ugly English journalists.
So far it's working.
☹️
So when Ben says “We’ll have to go through some more hurt to find our way through it and maybe, hopefully, look back over the next couple of weeks and months and years, and say that was a really important lesson", does he mean that he/we/England will have to suffer more hurt for the next couple of years or that they have to look back at the past couple of years (of hurt & learnings) to MAYBE HOPEFULLY see what has gone wrong (& why it CERTAINLY hasn't been fixed) or MAYBE even both the past & present? #confused
Respect the honesty. I love that Earl gives his all and plays with so much heart.
I appreciate that these players are under immense pressure. It seems they're gonna need to just learn how to handle it. If what James George said is true that they took their foot off the gas then I think there are psychological issues too.
AF, I thought he was one of the fwds who went missing and I was shocked after his game against the AB's. Valetini had it all over him. Still thought Marcus Smith was MOTM.
Must be easy reporting on England atm. You can basically just copy and paste the apologies from the previous week.