“We were our own worst enemies at times” - Jamie George

Despite a series of setbacks – including Quade Cooper’s late withdrawal, Tom Banks and Allan Ala’alatoa falling out of the game through injury in the first half and Darcy Swain’s red card – Australia can count themselves unlucky to have not walked away with victory in the first Test against England, a late surge from the latter allowing them to pluck the win (30-28). 

Speaking on a recent podcast England hooker Jamie George shared his thoughts on the contest: 

“We were our own worst enemies at times,” he said.  

“We probably gave them that game. We had a great opportunity to win it but didn’t throw a punch, which is just so disappointing,” George said. 

“I think that’s the thing we probably need to work out this week. It’s really exciting to be able to have a week leading up. We’ll go to Brisbane, try to fix a few things and be a different team come next weekend. 

“There were a few things we were going after. One of them was discipline and obviously that message didn’t go through because that was poor from us in the last 20 minutes. 

“So we’re going to have to have a look at that and have a conversation about that and realise we gave them a lot of opportunities. 

“We gave them a lot of entries to our half, we let them out of their half really easily and we can’t then sustain any pressure off the back of that.”