'They could have smashed Jason but there was so much respect'
Where to begin! I thought the support was amazing and it was one of the best atmospheres I've ever played in so I have to say thanks to the fans. It was unfortunate that we didn't perform to the standard we needed to perform to and we can only hold our hands up.
South Africa were clinical
But hats off to South Africa. They were very clinical in everything they did. They didn't really run at us and I probably made about four tackles at inside centre when normally you're looking at 10-15. They played very simple rugby, their 9 dictated absolutely everything, they put the ball in the right part of the pitch and chased and chased. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Our game plan was to kick against them and keep them on the back foot because if you try and run against these guys you'll get nailed by their four-up defence. The problem was we were kicking on the back foot a lot of the time and we didn't really get the field position we wanted to. They did a great job of stopping us at source, turned us over and scored two quick tries.
We had a meeting after the game and we know what we need to change because our attacking policies haven't been great. We need to sort them out, get people in the right positions so we're not just filtering towards the breakdown and we need to make sure we get the rest of the game right. It's very disappointing. To be 10-0 down going into half-time would have been ok but going in 20-0 down against a very strict, strong, South African side battered us really.
Robinson was phenomenal
But what can you say about Jason Robinson? He was absolutely phenomenal! It's one of the best performances I've ever seen from an English full-back. He was immense. The one memory I will hold dear in my whole rugby career is when he was running and tore his hamstring he had three South Africans on him who could have absolutely belted him! But instead they actually stood off and went 'woh, woh, woh' and just let him fall to the ground. It was very much a case of 'we respect you so much' and that's something that will live with me forever. I thought it was brilliant of the South Africans. They could have absolutely annihilated him, especially when he held onto the ball for so long, but they didn't and almost gave us the ball. That's the reason why I play rugby union, because there's a lot of respect around. Although they're humping us by 30 points they had the respect to do that.
Hopefully it won't be Jason's last action in this World Cup. So if we progress he might be involved. As far as my own performance goes, I'm pretty critical, to be honest. It was the first time Faz (Farrell) and I played together and it was hard when we were on the back foot to determine where we wanted to go and where the space was. Every time we kicked they had three or four guys back and I didn't kick to the standard I expected of myself. I wanted to drill it down and end up on their 10-metre line and I had the chances to do that. We didn't create anything either and that's really worrying for me.
I hear Faz has taken a bit of criticism but I thought in the last 20 minutes he tried very hard to get things going. But when you've got a game plan that doesn't work it's very hard to turn people's minds around and play differently.
We need to change things now
Samoa now becomes a massive game and we need to change things. What we're doing isn't working and it hasn't worked for the past three to four games we've played. I do hope that when it comes to Saturday we have everything in place and change what we need to change, express ourselves and play the way we need to play.
Jonny's fine now and kicking and running full-pelt so hopefully either he or Olly will come back but if not then we have to change accordingly.
As far as approaching Samoa goes, I can only go on what we've seen against South Africa and Tonga. They ran a lot of possession rather than kick it and that's something we have to try and exploit and pin them back in their own half. We know how dangerous they can be and it took South Africa until about 30 minutes to break them down.
We have to starve them of the ball and if we do that, they'll get frustrated and start giving penalties away. We need to disrupt their set-piece, attack a little more and really create things. But those boys do tackle hard, just like the New Zealanders and everybody, down to their 10 and 9 wants to get a piece of you. It's going to be extremely physical and if we don't hold onto the ball, they have some very good footballers and could do what South Africa did to us! We've got to make sure that's not the case as it really is do or die now.
Mike Catt.
Watch Mike talk about England's chances
17 September 2007
