England skipper Martin Johnson said on Wednesday nothing less than the best would be good enough to beat France in this weekend’s World Cup semifinal showdown.
The tournament favourites’ superb form of earlier this year has so far proved elusive, with a series of patchy performances prompting soul-searching in the England camp this week.
Johnson acknowledged that the Six Nations champions had underperformed en route to the last four, but emphasised that despite the problems, results had continued to go England’s way.
”I know I keep saying it — I’m boring myself by saying it — but it’s about winning games,” Johnson said.
”We would have liked to have gone into this game with a comprehensive win last week, but it wasn’t to be. We had to battle and that’s not a bad thing.
”We’ve had to battle through two or three games but we won them. I’d much rather be sitting here talking about a relatively disappointing victory than sit at home talking about being beaten.”
England struggled to hit the ground running in their Pool C games against South Africa and Samoa and trailed Wales 10-3 at half-time in Sunday’s quarterfinal before eventually taking control to win.
But Johnson believes England will be punished if they are slow to start against the in-form French, who romped into the semifinals by crushing Ireland 43-21 on Sunday.
”I don’t think we will be able to pull off a victory without playing well,” Johnson said. ”They’re too good for that, and they’re playing too well.
”That’s a positive thing. It’s not a game people are expecting us to win. Hopefully it will result in a top performance for us.
”We know if we don’t improve, we’ll get beaten. It’s as simple as that.”
England have beaten France twice this year, but are keenly aware that the French are the only team to have inflicted defeat on them in the past 18 months, winning in the 2002 Six Nations and in a friendly in Marseille.
Johnson said France’s record at the World Cup spoke for itself and that even an improved England performance might not be good enough to win Sunday’s semi.
”We could play well and still lose,” Johnson said. ”They are a world-class team and they’ve got a great record in the big
tournaments.
”Look at the last World Cup — they didn’t set their pool alight and then they produced the performance of the tournament against New Zealand,” he said, referring to France’s famous semifinal win in 1999.
Johnson meanwhile brushed off renewed criticism from Australia’s 1991 World Cup-winning skipper Nick Farr-Jones that old age had finally caught up with several members of England’s squad.
”He said that before we played in June, and then they were saying how good we were afterwards,” Johnson said, referring to England’s 25-14 win over the Wallabies in June.
”If you play badly people are going to question your age. If you’re young they’d say you’re too young. [Farr-Jones] has said quite a lot of critical things about quite a lot of people, that’s his prerogative.
”We didn’t play well against Wales but there were various reasons for that, none of them to do with how old we are.” — Sapa-AFP