Mumm rejects Jones’s tactics

Editor

Australia should not pay attention to England coach Eddie Jones’s talk in the media in the build-up to Saturday’s Test at Twickenham.

Those are the wise words of Wallaby lock Dean Mumm, who said he expects Jones to use all kinds of tricks to try and influence both side’s final Test of 2016.

Jones fired his first shots straight afte England’s impressive win over Argentina last weekend when he questioned Australia’s scrum tactics and requested a meeting with the referee prior to the game.

Mumm insists Australia can switch off the noise and focus on their own processes. The Wallabies’ hopes of a Grand Slam were dashed after Ireland beat them 27-24 in Dublin.

“I’m sure Eddie’s up to his regular tricks but I will try not to make myself aware of it really, because it’s kind of irrelevant to what we want to do next week,” said Mumm.

“We’re not going out there and playing Eddie Jones, we’re going out there and playing England and there’s a whole 23 of them willing to stop us so we’ve got a big job on our hands to get that done.”

England whitewashed the Wallabies in Australia in June, but Mumm believes they shouldn’t allow that series defeat to influence Saturday’s clash.

“We love playing England, it’s a massive match,” said Mumm.

“We’ve lost a goal in the grand slam but there’s still a tremendous amount to offer in next week’s game and firstly, I’m very excited and I’m sure once we have a good look at things and start to focus on the week then the excitement will be right up there.

“It’s always brilliant to play there and I think everyone will be up for it. I think you can’t help but be a little bit disappointed in the way June panned out, 3-0 series losses hurt and it actually wasn’t that long ago but we won’t be focusing on that as a motivating factor.

“We’ll be focusing on what we can do on the training pitch come next week and what we can do to put ourselves in the best position to win the match. If you look backwards, then you end up tripping over.”