{"id":249551,"date":"2025-10-29T22:04:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T22:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/249551\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T22:04:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T22:04:10","slug":"england-wary-of-australia-after-past-twickenham-defeats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/249551\/","title":{"rendered":"England wary of Australia after past Twickenham defeats"},"content":{"rendered":"

London: What a difference a year makes. Last November, former England halfback Ben Youngs stoked the fire ahead of the Wallabies\u2019 visit to Twickenham, dismissing the visitors\u2019 chances of victory on his podcast, saying: \u201cAustralia, don\u2019t waste my time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Youngs ate humble pie<\/a> after the Wallabies\u2019 stunning victory last year, and now the narrative has changed significantly in London. Former England and Lions winger Ugo Monye believes that writing off the Wallabies has proven a fool\u2019s errand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re a team that\u2019s had to live with a narrative maybe for the last year or so, where people just write them off,\u201d Monye, who has also worked as a commentator, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think at times people have been borderline disrespectful [to the Wallabies]. I remember heading down to the [British and Irish] Lions series and chatting to a load of Lions fans, and they\u2019re like \u2018this will be 3-0\u2019, and I\u2019m like, no, no, this is a very good Australian side.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I remember off the back of the Lions, people saying: \u2018this Australian team aren\u2019t any good, yeah, they won that last Test, but there was nothing on the line\u2019. Then the Wallabies go to South Africa, and everyone woke up and put some respect on them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if that\u2019s the narrative [of writing off Australia] coming into this weekend, let me just cast your minds back to South Africa, where they won there for the first time in 60 years and inflicted the biggest points margin on a South African team for years, they\u2019re a very good team.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Wallabies have earned back England respect in LondonCredit: Getty Images<\/p>\n

Former World Cup winner Ben Kay is just as nervous about a Wallabies team that he believes can turn in another strong performance at Twickenham, despite missing centre Len Ikitau and five-eighth James O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, there is huge doubt over here about the result on Saturday,\u201d Kay said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London: What a difference a year makes. Last November, former England halfback Ben Youngs stoked the fire ahead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-249551","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}