England coach Shaun Wane will be leaning on inside information from Catalans Dragons trio Sam Tomkins, Mike McMeeken and Michael McIlorum in the build up to Saturday’s World Cup clash with France in Bolton.
All but one of the 17 Frenchmen involved in Monday night’s opening 34-12 win over Greece in Doncaster are past or present Catalans players and therefore familiar to the Perpignan-based England trio.
“We had a Samoan week last week, with Samoan food and chat, now it’s over to Mike, Sam and Micky, we’ll have a French week and go into the game really confident,” Wane told a news conference at the England training base in Wigan.
Basingstoke-born McMeeken has spent the last two seasons with the Catalans and is expecting the French to put up plenty of resistance at the University of Bolton Stadium.
“England versus France is always a great game,” said the former London Broncos and Castleford second rower. “They’re a passionate bunch and they’ve got some strong individuals in their team.
“I’m sure we will be tested on Saturday. I’ve trained with them and played with them throughout the whole year so I know a lot of their strengths.
“I’ve got a lot of friends in that French team so I hope they do extremely well in this competition, just not against us. Obviously on Saturday those friendships will be put on hold for 80 minutes.”
Saturday’s round-two fixture will be the 52nd meeting between England and France, with Les Bleus seeking a first win for 32 years.
However, they made England work for a 30-10 victory in Perpignan last October and Wane was impressed by their win over Greece.
“It was typical France,” he said. “They did some really good things and some things I didn’t expect but that’s what you always get with France, that unpredictability.
“They’ve got some really good ball carriers, really big ones, so we need to make sure our defence is on.
“The Test last year was important to us, we got a lot from it and I expect the one on Saturday to be full on.”
Despite a near-perfect 60-6 win over Samoa in their opening game, Wane said post match there was room for improvement and he maintained that stance at Tuesday’s press conference after watching the game back.
“There are things we thought we could do better,” he said. “There’s been open chats with the players and they were very honest, they came up with some good detail on what we can improve, it wasn’t all positive.
“It’s mainly defence, we can defend better. We completed very high and didn’t give many penalties away but need to do it again on Saturday. I want better completion, less penalties, no errors, that’s the way we think.”
Wane will rotate his 24-man squad to give the seven players who missed out on Saturday an opportunity to force their way into contention for his quarter-final team, including Wigan second rower John Bateman who has completed a three-match ban carried over from the Super League season.
Wane says he has yet to decide whether to rest captain Tomkins and will discuss his half-back pairing with the rest of his backroom team before finalising his line-up.
“It was very difficult to pick that last team because the players I didn’t pick were all in good form,” he said.
“I was impressed by their response, all 24 care passionately about their country. They understand I can only pick 17 and this week is their chance.
“Then we’ve got the Greece game and hopefully we’ve got the quarter-finals. Then it’s fair game, whoever I’m convinced will get us that win in the quarter-final will play.”
Among the players to miss out on selection against Samoa was Salford hooker Andy Ackers, who is excited to win his first cap.
“It’s an overwhelming feeling but we’ve got a job to do and that’s to win a World Cup,” he said. “If I can add anything to that, it’s a dream come true. I’m buzzing.”
