“Without sounding arrogant…” – Shaun Wane’s ominous message after England’s win over “outstanding” Samoa

England surprised everyone today as they produced a 10-try demolition of Samoa.

Samoa went into the game as favourites and were being tipped as potential World Cup finalists if not winners, but England ploughed through them to lay down a marker ahead of the rest of the tournament after such a strong opening game.

But for England boss Shaun Wane, the best is yet to come as he said his side can be better than what they showed against Samoa, but was keen to not come off as arrogant as he gave respect to a star studded Samoan team which he described as “outstanding” post match.

Nonetheless, his focus was on his side and believing they can improve throughout the tournament which is worrisome for the likes of New Zealand, Australia and tonga.

“Yeah, without sounding arrogant, I thought we did some really good things but I’ve gotten to know these players really well over the last two years and there’s improvements in us, no question,” the ex-Wigan Warriors boss said.

“I don’t want to come across as arrogant, respect to Samoa, but I know what these fellas can do and we did some really good things today, I’m really happy but we can improve.”

He also revealed that he and his squad have fed off the negativity this week:

“Yeah I know nobody gave us a chance to win the game but within our group the tight team spirit we have and how we’ve trained, we knew what we could do.

“We enjoyed all that negativity to be honest. Whatever people want to say about us that’s up to them. I’m not on social media so I don’t hear lots of things but I knew it was quite negative about us.”

As aforementioned, he did underline how good Samoa are but used this to demonstrate how good he thought his side’s defence was: “Samoa are a very good team, their attack wasn’t as good as it can be but we defended really well today. I can’t give my lads enough credit today.”