![\"Tonga](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/england-vs-tonga-NZ5IG25RABC23JHPDS5GHSTYYE.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFacing a mathematical nightmare in their bid to make the World Cup semi-finals, England coach Brian McDermott says it would be disrespectful to simply assume his team can pile on massive points in their remaining group games.<\/p>\n
World No.3 England are already on the brink of elimination after suffering a 30-12 loss to Tonga in Perth on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Under the confusing group stage system employed for the World Cup, only two teams from across pools B and C will progress to the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
If Samoa beat Tonga and avoid an upset loss to Papua New Guinea, that would likely leave Tonga and England on two wins – with Tonga going through on the strength of winning their clash. <\/p>\n
If Tonga do England a favour by beating Samoa, then Tonga are likely to go through unbeaten, leaving Samoa and England on two wins apiece, barring any massive upsets.<\/p>\n
Under that scenario, it would come down to points difference, and Samoa’s 78-4 trouncing of France has put them well and truly in the box seat.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tonga player and Warrior Dallin Watene-Zelezniak celebrates his team’s win. (Source: Photosport)<\/p>\n
McDermott, who was coaching England for the first time in Saturday night’s four-tries-to-two loss to Tonga, says it would be a trap to assume his team can simply wallop France and PNG over the next fortnight. <\/p>\n
“We’re not going to trip ourselves up trying to come up with a plan about scoring 50 points next week,” McDermott said.<\/p>\n
“It would be tremendously disrespectful to either France or PNG to suggest that we’re going to rack a load of points up.”<\/p>\n
Playing with freedom in a bid to score big is also out of the question. <\/p>\n
“You can’t play with freedom – not at international level,” McDermott said. <\/p>\n
“You’ve got to keep hold of the ball. Trying to get fatigue into the opposition is a hard thing if you’re dropping the ball like we did.<\/p>\n
“I saw enough against Tonga to tell me that we’re heading in the right direction.”<\/p>\n
World No.5 Tonga take on world No.23 Lebanon and world No.4 Samoa in their last two games.<\/p>\n
Even if they lose to Samoa, Tonga are still a strong chance to make the semi-finals. <\/p>\n
“It’s is a good position. We came here to win, and we knew the importance of the game,” Tonga coach Kristian Woolf said.<\/p>\n
“It’s a big thing to get up and beat tier-one nations, and it’s only happened a few times … so really proud of the group. It’s really special.<\/p>\n
“But we’ve got to go and get a job done against Lebanon, and then we know we’ve got a big game the following week against Samoa.”<\/p>\n
Tonga’s main concern is a pectoral injury to five-eighth Latu Fainu, who was injured just 16 minutes into Saturday’s match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facing a mathematical nightmare in their bid to make the World Cup semi-finals, England coach Brian McDermott says…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,42,43,6430,40,38,41,39,1745],"class_list":["post-634286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-pacific-islands","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-uk-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}