{"id":284127,"date":"2025-11-14T14:29:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T14:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/284127\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T14:29:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T14:29:09","slug":"ford-and-george-urge-england-to-make-history-by-beating-new-zealand-england-rugby-union-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/284127\/","title":{"rendered":"Ford and George urge England to make history by beating New Zealand | England rugby union team"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maro Itoje\u2019s England have been urged to cement their place in sporting legend by becoming only the nation\u2019s ninth ever side to defeat the All Blacks.<\/p>\n

England head into Saturday\u2019s crunch clash as marginal favourites, with meaning a first Twickenham win over New Zealand for 13 years, and George Ford has revealed that the former captain Jamie George has issued a call to arms, imploring his teammates to carve themselves a slice of history.<\/p>\n

Steve Borthwick\u2019s side are on a nine-match winning run but England\u2019s men have lost their last three Tests against New Zealand and have not beaten the All Blacks since the 2019 World Cup semi-final. The last time they defeated New Zealand at Twickenham was in 2012, when Manu Tuilagi ran riot.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s match is the 47th meeting between the sides and England have triumphed on only eight occasions in the fixture\u2019s 120-year history but Borthwick\u2019s troops sense their opportunity to make a name for themselves. Since 2012, New Zealand have won four of the five Twickenham games while the 2022 match ended in a draw. Addressing England\u2019s wait for a home victory, the fly-half Ford said: \u201cIt\u2019s a long time ago, isn\u2019t it? It makes me feel old.<\/p>\n

Jamie George makes a break during England\u2019s last win against New Zealand, their 2019 World Cup semi-final. Photograph: Richard Heathcote\/World Rugby\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s only been eight ever. It\u2019s like: \u2018Come on, let\u2019s have a ninth now. 100 per cent. Let\u2019s change that.\u2019 Jamie mentioned something to the team earlier. I think the last time England beat New Zealand at Twickenham was 2012. And people still go on about 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then [Jamie] flipped it and said: \u2018This is the opportunity we have in front of us. Why can\u2019t we be the next team that, 2025, that they talk about?\u2019 The New Zealand game at Twickenham, 13 years ago, was the last one. It\u2019s definitely part of my motivation.\u201d<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

Ford, who missed two late chances<\/a> to kick England to victory a year ago, is one of six members of England\u2019s squad who appeared in the 2019 World Cup semi-final and believes the class of 2025 must carry the fight to the All Blacks in order to repeat the trick. \u201cThere is a belief, 100%, you can feel that in the week,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd you are exactly right. You\u2019ve got to go at a team like this in every area of the game. When we\u2019ve got the ball, we\u2019ve got to go at them. And when they\u2019ve got the ball, we\u2019ve got to go at them. The kicking game, the set piece, we\u2019ve got to go at them.\u201d<\/p>\n

England lined up in a V-formation to face the haka before the 2019 semi-final, while for last year\u2019s 24-22 defeat<\/a> they advanced to the halfway line, much to the delight of the Twickenham crowd. Asked if England had any plans to counter the haka, the tighthead prop Joe Heyes said: \u201cI don\u2019t think so, no. Let\u2019s hope our rugby [gets the crowd going]. When our backs are against the wall or we\u2019re going well, the crowd here really does rev you up and it does help because you are blowing. You kind of forget they\u2019re there sometimes and to know they\u2019re there supporting you is massive for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maro Itoje\u2019s England have been urged to cement their place in sporting legend by becoming only the nation\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-284127","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\/284127","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=284127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}