{"id":251323,"date":"2025-10-30T17:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T17:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/251323\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T17:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T17:07:08","slug":"wallabies-are-harder-opponents-than-all-blacks-says-england-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/251323\/","title":{"rendered":"Wallabies are harder opponents than All Blacks says England great"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

England\u2019s most-capped player Ben Youngs<\/a> believes Saturday\u2019s encounter with Australia<\/a> at Twickenham\u2019s Allianz Stadium will be the \u201chardest game\u201d for Steve Borthwick\u2019s side this Autumn Nations Series.<\/p>\n

England<\/a> will play their first Test in over three months on Saturday, kicking off their autumn campaign before clashes with Fiji, the All Blacks<\/a> and Argentina.<\/p>\n

Despite the World Rugby rankings suggesting otherwise, with the All Blacks ranked second and Argentina<\/a> ranked sixth, the 127-cap Englishman believes the lack of preparation time for Borthwick\u2019s squad will be a hindrance.<\/p>\n

Though England did hold a mini-training camp last week, the majority of the matchday squad that will face the Wallabies were playing in the Gallagher PREM last weekend before the full England squad assembled this week. Not only will that take a physical toll on the players, but Youngs believes the lack of preparation the team have had will be a hurdle to overcome against a Wallabies side that not only played last week against Japan, but finished their Rugby Championship<\/a> campaign a month ago.<\/p>\n

While the All Blacks are ranked five places above Joe Schmidt\u2019s side, Youngs says the extra time in camp will leave England in a \u201cfar better spot\u201d come the later stages of November.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, the hardest game England face is this first one,\u201d Youngs said on the For the Love of Rugby <\/a>podcast. \u201cThat is purely because of the training time, the limited preparation they\u2019ve got and that some guys haven\u2019t played a huge amount.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey play Fiji, and then they play New Zealand<\/a> the following week. By the time they play New Zealand, three weeks in camp, they\u2019ll be in a far better spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot on this one, it plays into the crowd and the atmosphere because the crowd\u2019s expectation is they don\u2019t really know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Youngs\u2019 fellow podcast host Dan Cole<\/a> added: \u201cAs a player, it\u2019s a massive test for them on a short week, in physical prep, but the mental game and their game plan.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England\u2019s most-capped player Ben Youngs believes Saturday\u2019s encounter with Australia at Twickenham\u2019s Allianz Stadium will be the \u201chardest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-251323","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\/251323","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=251323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}