{"id":818949,"date":"2026-10-30T18:54:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T18:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/818949\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T18:54:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T18:54:15","slug":"brian-mcdermott-airs-verdict-on-his-england-future-amid-likely-world-cup-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/818949\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian McDermott airs verdict on his England future amid likely World Cup exit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

England look set to exit the Rugby League World Cup but head coach Brian McDermott has reaffirmed his desire to coach the nation beyond the end of his current contract.<\/p>\n

England beat Papua New Guinea 34-12<\/a> but that scoreline is unlikely to be enough to qualify them for the semi-finals of the tournament, with McDermott\u2019s side now needing Tonga to beat Samoa by 47 points or more.<\/p>\n

With that very unlikely, it seems that England\u2019s World Cup is over and with that, McDermott\u2019s contract as he was only appointed by the Rugby Football League until the end of the tournament.<\/p>\n

However, the Gold Coast Titans assistant<\/a> has made it very clear that he wants to remain as head coach and build a proper England programme, something he again affirmed after the win against PNG.<\/p>\n

\u201cI keep ringing them but they won\u2019t answer the phone,\u201d McDermott joked when asked if he\u2019d spoken to the Rugby Football League about his future, adding: \u201cNo, I haven\u2019t talked to anybody about that. Let\u2019s get this job out the way, there\u2019s enough time to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

England\u2019s Rugby League World Cup semi-final hope lives on after France thrashing \u2013 click here to watch the latest episode of the Serious About Rugby League Show!<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018No conversations\u2019 during Rugby League World Cup about McDermott\u2019s future<\/p>\n

McDermott has been clear from the moment that he was appointed that he intended to stay on and ideally take England into the 2030 Rugby League World Cup, and he\u2019s reiterated that point again.<\/p>\n

Most Read on Serious About Rugby League<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI\u2019ve made it public and I\u2019ll say again, I\u2019d like to do the job and have a four-year plan in place for the next World Cup, which is how it should be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really excited about that, because if we can do what we\u2019ve done over the last three weeks, if we can put that into a plan for the next four years, have a proper strategic plan building up to the next World Cup, that would be good but we don\u2019t need to talk about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been no conversation about that during this World Cup here, we\u2019re just going to need to nail what we need to do now.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked if foundations have been laid for the future, he said: \u201cFor sure. I think if we come together next year as a group, we\u2019re going to be further down the track and we don\u2019t need to start from scratch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Highlighting just how much work has gone into the last few weeks, McDermott said: \u201cYou bear in mind on Friday when we landed, when the UK boys landed in Perth, we started talking to each other like we don\u2019t know each other. I put certain things in place about who we are as a group, what it means to us, how we\u2019re going to play, how we\u2019re going to attack, how we\u2019re going to defend. There\u2019s been a tonne of work gone on.\u201d<\/p>\n

What do England need to improve?<\/p>\n

With a World Cup exit now looming, McDermott was asked what he felt he needed from the RFL in order for England to be stronger the next time they play \u2013 something that he wouldn\u2019t get into.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re opening up a tin of worms now about what the international game needs for England, that\u2019s a different conversation,\u201d he said, however, he did explain how and why he feels his side have taken steps in this tournemant.<\/p>\n

He argued: \u201cI think we\u2019ve made massive strides together in such a short period of time, in really difficult circumstances, where the narrative of the last two weeks is you\u2019ve got to win by 70 and you\u2019ve got to win by 60.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t just need to win, you need to win by massive margins. You take all that into consideration. I thought today was good. Frustrating as anything in the second half, but again, I\u2019m making reference to the flow of the game. That wasn\u2019t to do with us, the game had no flow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England look set to exit the Rugby League World Cup but head coach Brian McDermott has reaffirmed his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-818949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}