The Autumn Internationals continue into their second week and Grosvenor Sport ambassador Will Greenwood is on hand to give his opinion on four key fixtures this weekend, including England’s showdown with Australia on Saturday.
We’ll start off with England against Australia on the Saturday, and I think it would be an absolute disaster if England lose to Australia. You can’t lose to the sixth or seventh best team in the world who, last time out, got pumped by New Zealand.
Yes, they’re Australia, they’ve won two World Cup’s and are an unbelievably talented side, but good teams don’t lose back-to-back and throw away winning positions, so England cannot lose this. Australia haven’t played a match for a while whereas England were able to build up their match fitness last week, so there really isn’t any excuse.
The final 20 minutes against New Zealand last week was the classic ‘1-0 away from home and taking off your attacking midfielder’ tactic to try and hold on. Football fans will probably think that’s completely the right thing to do, but you have to keep playing and sustain some sort of threat against these kinds of teams.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of kicking and it’s a good tactic, but the message it gave to New Zealand was that this was all England were going to do. It got to a point where New Zealand knew if they attacked and turned the ball over, England were just going to kick it back to them. I think this kind of mindset invited New Zealand back into the game.
In terms of a prediction, I’m backing Australia with an 10.5-point start. I’ll go with 35-25. England need to score at least three tries here – not just for the win, but for the peace of mind in that they can say, ‘lads, we can actually play rugby!’
Onto Ireland against New Zealand, where I’m backing New Zealand with a 5.5 points start. There will be a lot of tension in there in the sense that it’s the replay of the World Cup quarter-final last year. I think this is one of the best Test matches in 2024 and I reckon it’ll go down to the wire. I can see why Ireland are favourites, but I don’t see value in their odds of 12/25 to win the match. I don’t view their favouritism to the same extent.
Scotland against South Africa is a massive showdown. Scotland had a nice run out against Fiji last week, whereas South Africa haven’t played for a bit, but they’ll be gutted about Darcy Graham picking up a head injury.
I still remember there was a moment in the World Cup between these two last year on the left-hand side where Scotland should have scored. They probably wouldn’t have gone on to win it, but it would have been a much tighter game. South Africa are undoubtedly favourites because their team is absolutely insane, but Scotland are a brilliantly coached side and will definitely make the most of being the home team. I see this as more of a four-point game than a 10-point game, so I’d go with the Scotland +8.5 selection.
We’ve also got Wales against Fiji this weekend. I love Wales and I think I’m more optimistic about them than others, but you can’t get away from the fact they haven’t won a competitive fixture in over a year. It’s been a challenging time for them. I think they’ll get the job done here though, so Wales to win with a 6.5-point handicap is my selection.