England Six Nations stars keen to show they've learned their lesson vs France
England take on France in Lyon tonight looking to back up their epic 23-22 win over Ireland last week.
Jamie George has vowed that England won't make the same mistake they did in 2019 when they face France tonight (Saturday). The captain was part of Eddie Jones' team in 2019 when they trounced the All Blacks in the World Cup semi-final, only to falter a week later in the final against South Africa.
George led England to a thrilling 23-22 victory over Ireland last week and is keen to follow up on that success in Lyon.
He recalls how England lost focus after defeating New Zealand four-and-a-half years ago in Japan, resulting in a crushing 32-12 defeat by the Boks. The 33-year-old insists they won't fall into the same trap this time.
The skipper reflected: "I learned a big lesson in 2019 after the New Zealand performance around things like emotional highs and lows. Last Saturday was probably as an emotional performance we have had since 2019.
"We believed the hype and kept living it for three or four days afterwards. You're in a World Cup final week and I had every distraction under the sun.
"People wanting to come over, thousands of people asking you for tickets, people from school coming out the woodwork who I hadn't spoken to for 10 years. It's great but it can be really distracting and I probably learnt that the hard way.
"It's a World Cup final, you think you're going to be absolutely buzzing. I was buzzing mentally, it was almost a situation that I was trying to convince myself that I was buzzing rather than having anything in my legs."
England are aiming for a fourth Six Nations win in a row for the first time since 2020, but they will need to overcome a poor performance against France last year. England lost 53-10 to the French at Twickenham and George is keen to avenge that humiliating defeat.
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He said: "We were awful. It wasn't even just the result France were great, France played well, played smart, but we didn't work. The bare minimum of what we should be about is fight and showing character. That game was the complete opposite.
"We gave up, we looked tired, we didn't front up physically. That isn't the sort of team we want to be and it still hurts me to this day. Those sorts of performances are still going to hurt.
"Especially doing it at Twickenham, with the things we've spoken about trying to make Twickenham a really hard place to come to. I think that is certainly in the motivation.
"Not many teams come to France and win. We haven't done that since 2016. We're very aware of that. We achieved something special last weekend, we're very aware of that, everyone felt that, but being able to back it up is a huge motivation for me.
"Good teams react well to setbacks, great teams make sure they back it up."
