Billy Vunipola says England’s pack will be happy to “play ugly” if it means avoiding a 3-0 series defeat to New Zealand. The touring team were undone by the All Blacks counter-attacking expertise in the second Test and are determined to tighten up this weekend in their third and final contest with the world champions.
Big forwards such as Vunipola are also vowing to “get in the faces” of their opposite numbers and starve them of swift set-piece possession. “If it wins us the game, we’ll do it,” he stressed. “England won the World Cup doing it. It’s one of those cliches that you win playing ugly but you’re still winning. That’s our biggest goal: to come away from this tour having won one of the Tests.
“Hopefully we can do that and I’m confident we can, whether that’s by playing counterattack or by playing to our strengths of mauling, set-piece and grinding it out. As a pack and as a team we need to put as much pressure on them as we have done over the past two weeks and stop them playing the game they want.”
Vunipola will be making his first start of the series, having taken a while to bounce back from the disappointment of Saracens’ successive final defeats at the end of the domestic season. Now recovered, he is particularly focused on countering the try-scoring threat offered by his opposite number Kieran Read and New Zealand’s sharp outside backs.
“We can neutralise that by taking away the threat of their scrums, mauls and line-out. We need to attack, get in their faces and keep them on the back foot,” said Vunipola. We can’t get dragged into playing their game of width, counter-attacking and offloading. Stick to your guns and your gameplan and hopefully everything will be fine.”
The 21-year-old Vunipola is also glad to be starting, rather than being employed as an impact replacement as was the case in Dunedin. “I think I just tried to do too much. It’s tough coming off the bench; you are trying to make an impact and you are trying to show the coaches you bring something different. As a starting player, you can build into a game rather than having to come in and try and get to a level where everyone else is already at.”
