St Helens star calls for ‘clinical’ England to step up and save Ashes

St Helens hooker Daryl Clark has laid out what England need to do to keep their Ashes hopes alive, insisting they must be more clinical than in last weekend’s opening Test.

Clark started in last weekend’s first Test and scored England’s only try, going over from close-range late in the game.

That prevented a whitewash, but Australia’s comprehensive 26-6 victory means England face a huge task in the second game of the three-Test series, at Everton on Saturday.

Clark reckons the positive is England know what went wrong and where they need to improve.

“We started pretty well, but we bombed two or three chances,” he pointed out. “The end of our sets weren’t great, we dropped the ball a few times early on and against a team like that you are going to get punished. That’s what happened.

“We spoke about how, in big games like that, you’re not going to get many opportunities and when you do, you need to ice them.

“We had two or three in that first 30 minutes and, unfortunately, we didn’t ice them. It came back to bite us – they were clinical and when they got chances, they took them.”

Clark insisted: “We need to be a lot better. I think we completed at 65 per cent in the first half and if you do that against any team you are going to struggle, but definitely against these men. They will punish you and that’s what they did.

“We weren’t clinical enough in that first half, dropped the ball too many times and didn’t ice our chances. They did and they punished us.”

St Helens hooker calls for greater completion to pressure Australia

Clark admitted his second Test try, during his 14th appearance for his country, was little consolation.

“It’s better than getting nilled, I suppose,” he said. “We finished all right, but you always find that in games like that, when you’re chasing.

“We need to be up at 90-95 per cent completions, icing our chances and being really good at kick-finishes – the opposite of what we did [on Saturday].

“There’s a bit to work on, but credit to them. They were really good, really strong and they were clinical. It is going to hurt, we need to be tough on ourselves and we need to be a lot better.”

Clark felt there were signs in the first half an hour at Wembley England can turn things around.

“If we ice a couple of our opportunities when it’s 0-0, maybe it’s a different game,” he reflected.

“It would put them under more pressure, but we need to be more clinical – we weren’t, they were.

“They were pretty good all over the field, but we showed we could break them. Reece Walsh came up with two special plays to save a couple of tries, but they showed they can score points and they can go back-to-back pretty quickly.

“It’s three Tests and that’s one. We have to get it right this week or that’s game over. We are confident we can be a lot better than that. Sixty five per cent completions in the first half, we’ve not done that for a few years.”

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