By STEVE MASCORD
WHEN the halftime siren sounded on Australia’s 8-0 First Test lead, England players jogged down the Wembley tunnel to be addressed by their coach. The Kangaroos went nowhere.
First they formed a huddle on the field and then – when hooker Harry Smith was interviewed on TV – they refused to leave his side. Smith didn’t know he had to do the interview as he only assumed the captaincy when Isaah Yeo was forced off with concussion in the seventh minute.
And by the time they hit the sheds, according to forward Hudson Young, they had identified their problems and laid in a course for victory.
“We were just making too many mistakes in our own end,” Young recalled when asked about the contents of the pow wow.
“I made two errors so I was part of that. Kick to the corners, stick to the basics and we knew we had such a quality side that we could score points.
“Once we built the pressure, we’d be good to go.”
That’s certainly how it played out as the Aussies turned up the intensity and were rewarded with 18 second half points. On the huddle, halfback Nathan Cleary added: “A lot of it was around the errors and releasing pressure. We had too much of that. We probably had a bit too much of it in the second half too but we went into it with the right mentality.”
England captain George Williams discussed what it was like to be on the other side of the building intensity from the tourists.
“What we did in the first half, we burnt our energy and in the back end we didn’t have much,” he admitted.
Aussie five-eighth Cameron Munster told the BBC: “It could have been a different scoreline at halftime. We got ourselves into trouble in the first half.
“We were pretty lucky tonight.
“We were pretty scratchy at one stage …. We could have completed about 60 percent. I know we’ve got footy in us but we shot ourselves in the foot a few times. We tried to pull the trigger every time.”