Elliot Daly is expecting full-blown Test match intensity during England’s back-to-back World Cup warm-up matches against Wales, with Eddie Jones naming his World Cup squad after the first game.
England host Wales a week on Sunday before making the trip to Cardiff on Saturday 17 August. England’s 31-man squad for Japan will be announced a day after the opening match at Twickenham.
“Every time we play Wales it is a brilliant atmosphere. Especially playing them home and away, you are always going to get good support and it is always a great crowd vibe there, and always a great game,” says the 26-year-old.
“It’s a Test match, so [Test match] intensity will be brought. Definitely – it will be similar to a Six Nations game. You can’t be talking about not going for those games, especially as there are only four games before the World Cup starts. We will be hopefully bringing a lot of intensity in those games and seeing where we get to.”
Daly and the rest of the England squad have spent the past week at a training camp near the Italian city of Treviso where they have experienced sweltering heat and humidity levels of up to 90%, a taste of what lies ahead at the World Cup in Japan, which starts on 20 September. While dealing with the heat has posed problems, Daly has been impressed by the attitude of the squad. “Training has been really competitive. It has just been about going out and playing,” he says.
“Everyone is really looking forward to these [warm-up] games to show what we can do, to try and get that team cohesion we have been looking at in the last three, four weeks of training together.”
England will line up in Pool C against France, Argentina, USA and Tonga, and Daly said in-depth analysis of them will begin soon. “I will look at them over the next couple of weeks,” says Daly. “While we’ve been out [in Treviso] we’ve just been trying to focus on what we’re doing. Once we get back to Pennyhill Park [the team’s base in England], that’s when we will be looking at more games involving our World Cup opposition.
“We have been watching matches, but they have not been discussed yet; it’s hard to pick trends from one or two games, it’s more about the entire Rugby Championship or entire Pacific Nations Cup.”