A couple of Fijian lineouts stolen by Portugal last Sunday night in the final match of the 40-game pool section of the Rugby World Cup has reportedly piqued the interest of the England staff that hooker Jamie George refers to as “lineout pigs”.
In a shocking result in Toulouse, the Iberian Pool C minnows ambushed Fiji 24-23 in a combative manner that didn’t go unnoticed by Steve Borthwick and co.
The Islanders were credited with an 88.2 per cent success rate on their own lineout ball (15/17), a percentage that eclipsed how England had fared the previous day in Lille against Samoa with George as their thrower for the entire 80 minutes (17/20 for an 85 per cent success).
However, the English hooker suggested on Wednesday afternoon in Aix-en-Provence that the Fijian lineout is an area that his forwards are targeting for next Sunday’s World Cup quarter-final in Marseille.
“Fiji’s set-piece has got a lot better, but the way that Portugal targeted their lineout, in particular, was something that was very, very interesting, especially how they went about it, and we have got some complete lineout pigs in our team,” George began.
“George Kruis coming in, he is a complete nause, and obviously Steve, his father. Their conversations together are not necessarily fascinating but they are going to be coming up with a very, very good plan and we trust in that plan and we are going to try and put Fiji under a huge amount of pressure in that area.
“One of the plans specifically against Samoa was that we were going to try and maul them from maybe a little bit deeper. I’m not going to give any tactics away about his weekend but we need it to look a little bit clearer.
“Samoa did a good job at sort of disrupting our maul platform but we still managed to get some good go forward. We wanted to give some good quality ball to our backs. We know that the set-piece is going to be huge.
“We are playing against a very, very heavy pack whose maul is especially very, very good. We are going to have to be smart the way we go about that and we trust the lineout pigs to be coming up with a good plan.”
One opposition player that George will know very well will be Eroni Mawi, his Saracens front row colleague. “Very, very strong man.
“He came to Sarries probably quite raw but a very, very talented rugby player and he has worked really hard with Ian Peel at the club to make sure he gets better. Juan Figallo has come in recently as a scum coach and those two have done some excellent work.
“For me, Eroni has shown he is a very, very talented scrummager, very strong and he is going to pose a big threat to us this weekend but I guess the inside knowledge is always good when it comes to scrum time.”
