England's scintillating performance in blowing apart the seemingly invincible All Blacks last weekend has installed them, in many people’s minds, as firm favourites for Saturday’s Rugby World Cup final against South Africa.
England were sublime in their 19-7 crushing of New Zealand, but the title showdown will be an entirely different affair, says World Cup winner Will Greenwood.
He explains: “You don’t understand the Springbok mindset.
“The Springbok mindset is you hit things, you get up, you hit things, you carry, you hit things again, you are relentless and you keep going.”
Greenwood says the Springboks lineout will be a big weapon for them on Saturday.
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He says: “They are powerful, powerful men. So they will look at the video and go, ‘England destroyed New Zealand’s lineout’.
“When New Zealand won a penalty they went to the corner but they lost the lineout so they couldn’t get a foothold in the game.
“South Africa have won World Cups on lineouts before, specifically 2007.
“They’ll believe that they won’t let England take that facet of their game away from them, therefore the game will be much more balanced in terms of territory and then they’ll say to England: ‘loved what you did last week, do that from back there’.
“Because you’re going to have to do it from back there because if you boot it back to us, we’re not going to play, we’re going to boot it back to you and we’re going to wait and wait and if you make an error we’re going to come after you.”
England side:
15 Elliot Daly, 14 Anthony Watson, 13 Manu Tuilagi, 12 Owen Farrell (captain), 11 Jonny May, 10 George Ford, 9 Ben Youngs, 8 Billy Vunipola, 7 Sam Underhill, 6 Tom Curry, 5 Courtney Lawes, 4 Maro Itoje, 3 Kyle Sinckler, 2 Jamie George, 1 Mako Vunipola
Replacements:
16 Luke Cowan-Dickie, 17 Joe Marler, 18 Dan Cole, 19 George Kruis, 20 Mark Wilson, 21 Ben Spencer, 22 Henry Slade, 23 Jonathan Joseph.