Think positive, back yourselves more’

Martin Johnson

MARTIN Johnson says England’s best chance of surviving in the Rugby World Cup is to adopt a siege mentality and ignore the negativity that has built up before Saturday’s potentially crash-and-burn match against Australia.
The former England captain and coach — whose tenure was blighted at the end of a wonderful career when his selection calls came under fire amid off-field turmoil at the last World Cup — says there is little point agonising over the loss to Wales that has sent experts into a spiral of doom.
“There’s been a lot of hype,” he said of the criticism levelled at the coach, Stuart Lancaster, and the captain, Chris Robshaw, who went for a late lineout instead of three points from a penalty that could have secured a draw.
“Stuart made the changes. But actually that worked. Everybody did what they were picked to do. I felt we just stopped playing, trying to defend the lead. We’ve all played in teams where we’ve done that. And we paid the price for that. In the second half we kept giving balls away, and we just let the game drift.
“You need guys who can feel what is happening and take a grip of it. In the first game Mike Brown did that against Fiji and gave us some impetus. We lacked a little bit of that (on Saturday). We lost by a very narrow margin: Could have, should have – it’s the way it is.”
Johnson said it was the execution of the late lineout move – which foundered with a short throw and subsequent rumble into touch – that brought England undone.
“But they’ve got to get over it. There will be a negative feeling about it. They’ve got to be able to forget about that and go out and play on Saturday night. There’s no magic formula for doing that. They’ve just got to get together as a team and not (worry about) ex-players, ex-coaches, media. They’ve got to say: ‘It’s up to us whether we go through.’”
Asked by Mastercard in London on Tuesday night what he would change, Johnson said: “It doesn’t change. You do the same things you’ve always got to do: go out there and be aggressive and careful.
“You can’t make mistakes that were made in the second half. You’ll always make errors but we just need to back ourselves a little bit more. We need to keep the ball, especially on the flanks. We’ve got good runners and they need to run, and not always go for the miracle chip kick, thinking something’s going to happen.”
Keith Wood shared the platform with Johnson and the former Ireland captain agreed with his one-time rival that the high level of injuries in this tournament are a concern.
“It is very hard to make a call after two weekends,” he said, “but I’ve been saying for a long time that you should only have replacements for front-row forwards, one replacement back and one more replacement forward.
“Players really should play for 80 minutes if they can. And the knock-on effect from that is the guys will have to be smaller.
“I know [the International Rugby Board] are looking at it seriously, because the hits are just getting bigger. There are always big hits but now there are more of them. It’s about making the game a little bit safer, but I really think they’re trying. There were great reactions in the middle of the Six Nations, pretty instantaneous with the diktats they were giving out to referees and players. — Telegraph