Newly-appointed England head coach Brian McDermott has claimed the key to Rugby League World Cup victory is in Tyson Fury’s 2015 heavyweight world championship win over Wladmir Klitschko.
Englishman Fury travelled over to the Ukrainian world champion’s adopted home stadium in Dusseldorf as a huge underdog but won a unanimous decision to end the champion’s near ten-year reign.
For England, this year’s Rugby League World Cup will offer them the chance to end Australia’s 13-year reign with the Kangaroos having won the last three tournaments in 2013, 2017 and 2022.
Meanwhile, England have never won the World Cup with Great Britain’s 1972 victory now over 50 years ago, highlighting the dominance that the southern hemisphere sides, mainly Australia, have exerted in international rugby league.
As such, McDermott has called for England to abandon any ‘copy and paste’ tactic and urged them not to play Australia at their own game, just as Fury refused to play Klitschko at his back in 2015.
Boxing champion to inspire Rugby League World Cup victory
Speaking to media shortly after this confirmed appointment, McDermott was asked simply ‘how do you beat Australia’ with his answer perhaps surprising most as he pivoted to boxing.
McDermott responded: “Tyson Fury beat Wladimir Klitschko in 2015 and Tyson Fury admitted, and he was unapologetic in his admission, that he didn’t have a strong right hand, or as strong a right hand as Wladimir Klitschko had.
“He openly admitted he wasn’t going to stand in front of Wladimir and trade punches. He had to do something differently and he employed a game plan which Wladimir wasn’t used to, and got the job done.
“Take out of that what you will, but I’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for whether it’s Australia or New Zealand, or one of the stronger teams, one of the other emerging teams that are becoming stronger, Tonga and Samoa. They’re all quality teams. I just don’t think England should copy and paste the way they are playing.”
Given Australia’s recent dominance at the World Cup and their whitewash of England in last year’s Rugby League Ashes, McDermott was asked if the gap is ‘bridgeable’, at which point the Fury comparison was made once again.
“It is bridgeable, and the competition is winnable,” McDermott declared, adding: “I truly believe that but not if you’re going to stand in front of Wladimir Klitschko and lie to yourself and say that our right hand is as strong as his right hand.
“If anybody’s listening to this thinking I’m saying we can’t win, you’re not listening. We can win. We absolutely can win, but we have to do some things differently.”
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‘Astonishing’ that England can even compete with Australia, claims McDermott
It’s to be seen how exactly England will do things differently, particularly given the difficult circumstance that McDermott finds himself in as an Australian-based coach who will have little to no personal contact with his players before they land down under for the World Cup.
Pointing to last year’s Ashes, McDermott claimed: “We pushed them all the way. They were rattled in parts of games. We just didn’t do it for long enough.
“Historically, the international team, whether it be England or Great Britain, has got to a point in a game where you’re trading punches with, and let’s just talk about Australia, you’re trading punches with Australia, and it gets to that point in the game where they would break away.”
Avoiding that breakaway point is McDermott’s big task but he’s tasked his own players with buying into his message, something that he declared on TalkSport that same day.
“What I’m asking the players is that they will have to buy into something that they wouldn’t normally do at their clubs. They’re going to have to buy into a certain style and a way of operating that they haven’t done before.
“We need to do that if we’re going to give ourselves a chance of winning. Whether that’s the usuals who have played for the last ten years or if it’s some young fella who has never played, they have to come in and give their best and understand that there is going to be a way of playing where we need complete buy-in.”
He had also revealed on TalkSport that it is ‘astonishing’ that England can get as close to Australia as they do, given the vast differences in resources between the domestic competitions of England’s Super League and Australia’s NRL.
Refuting any notion of an inferiority complex, McDermott told TalkSport: “I’m not here to talk the NRL up but people will know that the NRL is vastly more invested in, the resources, the player pool, the facilities, the appetite for game is enormous, and it keeps getting bigger.
“If you look at the difference in the two competitions and the differences in preparation that the two teams have internationally, the fact that an English team gets close to pushing Australia is astonishing. It’s astonishing that we can get that close.”
