Jamie George glad England backed up haka response with win over All Blacks

Jamie George was pleased to have played a part in England’s defiant reply to the haka but was even happier to beat the All Blacks 33-19 at Twickenham in perhaps the team’s best performance under coach Steve Borthwick.

George, himself a former England skipper, persuaded Borthwick and current skipper Maro Itoje it was worth revisiting the response to the haka England employed in a 2019 World Cup semifinal win in Japan.

Back then, England formed up in a “V”. On Saturday they adopted more of a horseshoe, with a capacity crowd of some 82,000 at Twickenham belting out a chorus of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot – England’s rugby anthem – for good measure.

As was the case six years ago, the response to the traditional Māori challenge was the prelude to a memorable win – just England’s ninth in 47 tests against the All Blacks spanning 120 years.

“I had an idea and I thought ‘why not?’ so put it to Maro and Steve and they got on board with it,” said George, who was also England’s starting hooker in the 2019 World Cup semifinal.

“Maro said ‘yes, as long as we don’t have to have too many rehearsals’! We spoke through it on Friday night and you’d be amazed at the amount of questions that I had and how hard it was to form the V.”

He added: “We wanted to replicate 2019 because we hadn’t done it at the Allianz [Twickenham], which is something that I always thought would be pretty cool because we speak a lot about of connection with the fans.”

But George said the pre-match theatrics would have counted for little if England, who were 12-0 down early on, had been unable to achieve a victory that gave them a 10th in a row against all opponents.

“Doing something like that is great, but then backing up it with a performance is the most important thing – we did that.”

England’s win over the All Blacks six years ago was followed by the disappointment of a crushing World Cup final loss to South Africa.

The 35-year-old George said while it was important the current England side savoured Saturday’s success, they needed to refocus before next weekend’s Autumn Nations Series finale against Argentina at Twickenham.

“I learned from the 2019 World Cup semifinal against New Zealand that wins like this take a huge amount of emotion and emotionally drain you,” he said.

“A lot of the guys will wake up exhausted with their phones buzzing and everyone telling us how amazing we are. And that’s great – revel in it, enjoy it. But keep it in context.”