Joe Schmidt accuses England of ‘gamemanship’ while Steve Borthwick calls for ‘improvement’
Wallabies head coach Joe Schmidt and England's Steve Borthwick.
Wallabies head coach Joe Schmidt has hit out at England’s gamemanship in the build-up to the meeting at the Allianz Stadium on Saturday.
Australia fell to a 25-7 defeat to Steve Borthwick’s charges, with the hosts pulling away in the latter stages of the encounter thanks to second-half tries by Alex Mitchell, Henry Pollock and Luke Cowan-Dickie.
Schmidt hits out at England’s gamesmanship
In the build-up to the match, The Telegraph reported that Borthwick had met with match referee Nika Amashukeli and raised as many as 40 examples of what he and his staff deemed to be persistent side-entries at rucks by Australia in previous matches.
Early on in the clash, the Wallabies were repeatedly penalised at the breakdown, but Schmidt does not believe that the England staff’s actions had an influence on how Amashukeli handled the match.
However, he did hit out at the gamesmanship before the two sides faced off in their opening Autumn Nations Series match.
“It’s a bit of gamesmanship,” Schmidt remarked when he was asked about the report after the match.
“We’ve had up until today 1,256 attacking rucks; there are two players at least in each of those, that’s 2,500 ruck entries.
“We had one yellow card. No one has left the field injured as a result of our cleanouts. We haven’t ever been excessively penalised for side entries.”
The head coach said that he was ‘disappointed’ that England resorted to those tactics but added that it didn’t distract the Wallabies.
“So, I always find those things disappointing but not distracting. All we can do is focus on what we do and try to do it as well as we can,” he added.
Schmidt didn’t believe that the experienced Amashukeli was influenced by the pre-match tactics.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said.
“We’d have a look at guys with their hands down, and you know, if it’s not one thing, it could be another. We have a fair bit of confidence in the referee.
“For all those incidents that were highlighted, 10 were sent to the referee, and he didn’t even agree with them all – it wasn’t the number of 40 that was said earlier in the week, and I think the referee is very experienced and he just got on and refereed the game.”
Borthwick’s remarks
Fielding a similar line of questioning in the post-match, Borthwick said that he was happy with how Amashukeli handled the game, but added that England needs to make improvements at the breakdown.
“I think that Nika had a good game, but we’ve got some areas to improve,” the England boss said.
“I thought Fraser McReight stole too many balls from us. He’s a wonderful player, an incredible player.
“We’ve got some work to do in that area, we know Fiji challenge a breakdown from inside and outside, and they have a big counter-ruck threat.
“So, we’ve got some work to do this week.”
He added: “I thought Nika did a great job in the game, and he’s an experienced ref who did a great job in difficult conditions.”
