The harsh reality is that come Saturday evening one of England or Ireland will be nursing their wounds in defeat and will head into this Rugby World Cup off the back of two straight losses and the thought of it being England is too painful to think about right now. By hook or by crook England must muscle past Ireland on home soil even if Stuart Lancaster is played down what defeat could mean at the squad announcement day on Tuesday;
“I think, both teams will want to win and unless it is a a draw there will only be one winner. Does it define how you’ll do in the World Cup? Personally I don’t think that it will, I think New Zealand in 2011 might have lost the last two games and then went on to win it. But obviously clearly from our point of view, playing at home, playing at Twickenham it is a game that we definitely want to win because it will build momentum going into that Fiji game - that game itself will be a game in it’s own right but we will learn a lot about our players this weekend and we look forward to it.”
Facing into the Irish challenge without fear will be critical for England Rugby this week - the Green machine is a well oiled one and one that has a potent mix of experience and flair. History tells us that matches between these two sides are fractious and intense at the best of times let alone with the added pressure due to the timing of this fixture and prior results. Ireland will name their side on Thursday and we all, including Stuart Lancaster, expect it to be a full strength one. On Saturday afternoon England will have to contend with and shrug off Ireland's fortes - aerial bombardment and tremendous physical intensity.
As has been the case during every single warm up match this summer we will have a keen focus on the centre partnership with Brad Barritt and Jonathan Joseph starting their first test together. One game out from a World Cup is this ideal? No, far from it however injury has forced this to happen extremely late and Stuart Lancaster believes that we should still expect plenty from the duo;
"We should expect a strong performance from both. They are both high-quality players. If Brad had been fit for the Six Nations he would have started alongside JJ on the back of what he’d done in the autumn straight up but he wasn’t so Luther got his chance. That combination of Ford, Barritt and Joseph have trained together consistently against Farrell, Burrell and Slade for two weeks now. It’s not as if we have suddenly put them together on Saturday, there has been a lot of work done together on the training field. Obviously that has to translate into a game. When you have two quality players with the work we have done you should be confident they will be cohesive."
Cohesion across the park is king, we cannot see another performance that is ‘blowing the cobwebs away’, there simply isn’t time for it. A familiar and focused England side must step out onto the pitch at Twickenham Stadium, the England side that we know and love. England must make life immensely difficult for Ireland, they must have a solid and destructive set piece and in attack run lines and moves that make Twickenham explode with noise. England’s discipline must be on point, we all know that Nigel Owens is the best in the business and as a collective England must quickly understand his perspective and adapt to it. It goes without saying that the crowd's role will be to make Twickenham an uncomfortable and dare I say it unfriendly/hostile place for Ireland to be... they must pressure the visitors and provide support and reinforcement to England.
It is fair to say that the pressure on their shoulders of this England XV and bench has escalated to a scale that none will have experienced before wearing the rose of England. The white hot pressure of the Rugby World Cup has arrived, two weeks early, and as Stuart said we will learn a lot about these England players on Saturday afternoon.
