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'England will kick Fiji to death, and it's France by one – Adam Jones
By Adam Jones
I’m going with England to reach the Rugby World Cup semi-finals. You saw in that first pool game against Argentina that they have got a big win in them. They also played Fiji in the summer and while they lost, they will have done their analysis and will have worked out any weakness in their armour.
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England will kick Fiji to death. Maul, scrum, points, and then their little superstar, Marcus Smith, will come in for a couple of tries from full-back. Smith is going to add an extra spark to the England attack, which is brilliant.
Traditionally when you play Fiji if you get thrown into that sling-the-ball-around type of game, it suits them. England will have to be a little bit more scrum for penalties, maul for penalties, and be very English with that extra bit of gold dust coming in at full-back. It will be interesting to see. England will win but not much.
Fiji have a lot of threats but if they can take care of the nuts and bolts, get their maul and scrum firing to just even get parity, and not let England get on top there, they can win.
Not having their first-choice 10 [Caleb Muntz] at the World Cup is a problem but they can still break the England attack down due to their personnel and talent.
The Fijians kind of look like they did well in their two big pool games and they have just tried to get through the other two. They knew they would have had to do something seriously bad not to qualify, shall we say, and all eyes would have been straight on the quarter-final despite the loss to Portugal.
You could tell from that match Fiji were already focused on the quarter-final and they could come out flying against England.
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There is a lot of emotion in that camp now for different reasons and there is a lot of playing for different things. Emotionally they are going to be there or thereabouts and if they bring their game, of course they can beat England. But I just fancy England to grind it down and squeeze the life out of it.
Turning to Sunday’s other quarter-final, we had a sweepstake in work at Harlequins and I said France but it’s such a 50/50 against South Africa. The French pack is not as big as it used to be. They have got big players but they are missing Paul Willemse.
It’s going to be a huge physical battle and I imagine it will be similar to the Ireland-South Africa pool game, a lot of running into each other, real brick wall stuff. But home advantage, the nine [Antoine Dupont] coming back in, I’ll give it to France.
There is a lot of talk about Dupont and the cheekbone he fractured last month. When I was playing 10, 15 years ago players would certainly have played with a few more knocks. I remember seeing Colin Charvis having his face strapped, Olivier Magne, it went on a bit.
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The medical side of rugby has gotten much better since then and players are way more looked after. But Dupont is the talisman, he is the head guy and if France are to win this World Cup, they need him fit and firing. There is a lot of pressure on him but he doesn’t seem to mind.
Handre Pollard only makes the South African bench and while he is the better kicker, Manie Libbok seems to get their attack moving which is something you haven’t seen a lot of over the last 10 years.
The fact they have got a massive pack of forwards and a backline whose attack is frightening will certainly have kept Shaun Edwards up this week.
But even if Libbok gets the attack flowing, you still have to score points to win. I’m sure he has done a lot of work on his kicking, but a converted try is worth more than two penalties so it would be all the better for South Africa if they can score more tries.
However, it’s home advantage for France, the whole country is looking for them to go and do it. They have talked about this World Cup for so long now, they will expect a good result. I’m going to France by one.
- This Rugby World Cup guest column is brought to you in association with the renewed partnership between Harlequins and official trading partner Saxo, a global leader in online investing, for the 2023/2024 Gallagher Premiership season;
- Aside from Wales legend and Harlequins coach Adam Jones, ex-Ireland hooker-turned-coach Jerry Flannery and England lock Joe Launchbury will also be writing columns over the course of the tournament.
England won game against Arg by kicking well, the one player who was responsible for that isn’t starting. They’ll win I believe but the game is going to be hugely physical and very different to the game whoever plays them next week will play. They’ll win but still won’t have any answers.
England had the worst warm ups, the easiest groups and will find themselves in the SF. I hope France/SA will smash them hard and show them how poor they really are. Borthwick and his big flat nose are a joke