Clive Woodward gave us his thoughts today on the Australia versus England game and Michael Cheika wasn’t happy with his claims.
In his Daily Mail column, today, the World Cup-winning coach decided to have a pop at the Wallabies intelligence.
Woodward wrote:
It is not a case of playing random running rugby against Australia, it’s all about attacking cleverly and with purpose.
It’s about never letting them off the hook. If you can keep hold of the ball and run through the phases, always moving forwards, Australia will disintegrate. Do the opposite of what they expect, move the ball quickly from the scrum, take quick line-outs, tap and go.
Contrary to popular belief, they are not the brightest team, they give away penalties and pick up yellow cards when they are stretched.
Playing at pace also applies to the scoreboard, keep it ticking. Just always score next. Target five tries and if they want to give us penalties in the process, take them too.’
As you can imagine, Michael Cheika did not take that lying down.
The Australian coach declared:
The only place things are going to be different is on the field on Saturday night and that’s where we’ve got to show our colours.
Talk is cheap, you know.
All eyes turn to Saturday at Twickenham, where England know its win or face being knocked out as hosts in the group stages.
