Eddie Jones vowed his men will “go after the All Blacks” as he fixed his sights on a mouth-watering collision with them at Twickenham.
The head coach is confident England can reproduce the kind of victory that upset New Zealand in the last World Cup and was hailed as one of their best-ever performances.
Jones celebrated equalling Clive Woodward’s number of wins as England boss with his team overwhelming Japan with seven tries in a 52- 13 victory over his former team.
Ireland gave New Zealand a bloody nose in their own backyard during the summer, and Jones wants his team to do the same in west London next Saturday, insisting: “The All Blacks are in a redevelopment of their game and style, so it’s an ideal opportunity to face one of the giants of world rugby.
“If you look at the history of the sport, there have been games for around 150 years. England have won just 22 per cent of the Tests against New Zealand so there is a narrative about the game that says England cannot beat them.
“But the 2019 World Cup semi-final showed that, if you have the right attitude and right game plan, history can be broken. We want to make history again.
“We have enough leadership and quality in our group not to get false confidence but why shouldn’t we believe we can beat them?
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“New Zealand have a different coaching set up and are playing a slightly different style than they used to. But guys like Owen, Mako, Maro and Jamie George who played in that World Cup game against them will reinforce into the other players that it is not mission impossible. If we go after them they are there for the taking. And we are going to go after them!”
Fly-half Marcus Smith aims to make it a special occasion against the All Blacks. He said: “We’ll review this game, watch NZ and see where we think we can strike them. More importantly we have to focus on us, get our game on the park, light up the crowd, get them right behind us singing Sweet Low. We know when we do that we’re a tough team to beat. We’re already excited.
“We’ve got to look internally, sharpen up our skills, sharpen up our attack. If we get our performance right we believe we can win.”
Jones, who celebrated going level with old adversary Woodward with 59 wins as head coach but has a better win percentage than him, claimed: “I was happier with the intent we showed through the middle of the field and we scored some good tries from the edge.”
Captain Owen Farrell said: “That was miles better and felt more like a team going places. It’s about attitude and we will need to turn up against the All Blacks with the right attitude. It’s about making the team tick and we did a great job of doing that today.”
Full-back Steward was named Man of the Match, and said: “I love playing at Twickenham. It brings the best out of me. We let ourselves down against Argentina and all week we’d been saying we want to bounce back today and put on a really good performance. We addressed the problems we had and found solutions.”
Japan coach Jamie Joseph said: “You have to take your hat off to England, we were outplayed. They deserved the win and put us under a lot of pressure. We conceded a lot of penalties in the set-piece and we found it hard to defend our lines.”
