England forwards coach Graham Rowntree says they will go into the Rugby World Cup aiming to take on the Southern Hemisphere superpowers with the high-tempo style that enabled them to score six tries against France on the final day of the Six Nations Championship.
On the hottest day of the year, there was no let-up in conditioning work at England's Pennyhill Park training base, with Rowntree disclosing the players faced "horrible" sessions in a bid to get them "as fit as they have ever been", so they hit their target of 40 minutes' ball-in-play time in a match.
"You've got to be challenging teams with ball in hand and making the opposition work across the field in every department, run them around," Rowntree said.
"We aspire to be a high ball-in-play side. There are teams around the world [notably New Zealand] who are leading those stats at the moment, how they are running in the game and keeping the ball alive, and we want to be the team leading it. The ball is on the field for the most amount of time when we play New Zealand. And that is challenging. It's in the upper 30 minutes. We want to get to about 40 minutes. Ball in play, challenging teams, playing exciting rugby."
Rowntree insisted England had not suddenly decided to play this way. "Look at the way we played the Six Nations, ball in hand, scoring 18 tries," Rowntree said. "It wasn't just against France. We want to play that brand of rugby. But you will need a few brands of rugby available to you to win a World Cup."
