Simon Poidevin fought a fierce battle against England five times during his 59 Test career, including the 1984 Grand Slam tour and the 1991 World Cup final, which was his last Test. But he laughed at the unusual sight of a Poidevin wearing an England kit.
“He only gets the English jumper with two Australian coaches (in the England camp), in Eddie Jones and Anthony Seibold,” Poidevin said.
Simon Poidevin followed the Wallabies game against England at Concord Oval in 1987.Credit:Brendan Read
“They’ve had a few injuries, like everyone else, so like the Crusaders have done, they’ve drafted a few of our players and it’s been a fantastic experience, to say the least.”
Poidevin, however, has no chance of pledging allegiance to England.
“Christian has French and Irish bloodlines, which excludes him [of playing for England]Poidevin said. “It’s his life. I can’t decide which route he takes. Better to play against England at Twickenham than to play for England at Twickenham.
England will train at Coogee Oval for the rest of the week, but ahead of what is their last game of a long season there is no way the team’s players will approach the bottom of their gauge. fuel.
“I don’t think that comes into the equation,” England scrum coach Matt Proudfoot said.
“This type of talk would be totally disrespectful of the challenge that awaits us. It’s not something we talked about or needed to talk about, or even repeated in small talk in the hallways. The guys are on it. The guys are here for this game. It’s 1-1. Everything is up for grabs. »
If the Wallabies want to exploit a tired England it will pay off the most in the second half and Wallabies half-back Nic White has said Australia will focus on getting off to a good start – something they failed to do in the second half. of the first two tests.
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“We were a bit disappointed with the way they come out of the blocks. You can’t give anyone a 19 point lead, especially a team like England, a world class team. We knew they were going to come out of the blocks with a little bit of advantage and physicality and we were pretty disappointed with our physicality and our advantage, so a little bit for us to watch there,” White said.
“It wasn’t very different in the way they played. They definitely won that [physicality] battle and took a good lead, and also won the territory battle. They come with a game plan which they execute very well and we have to be able to stop that – both physically and around that territory. A big part of that was discipline, you can’t give up 10 penalties before halftime. You’re going to give up territory, but we’re also going to give up 3-6-9.
Watch every July Test Series match on the home of rugby, Stan Sports. Kicking off this weekend with Wallabies v England (Saturday 7:15 p.m. AEST), All Blacks v Ireland (Saturday 4:30 p.m. AEST), South Africa v Wales (Sunday 00:55 AEST) and Argentina v Scotland (Sunday 5:05 a.m. AEST). All streaming ad-free, live and on-demand only on Stan Sport.
