Farrell wants England to enjoy World Cup final
England captain Owen Farrell has urged the squad to enjoy the 2019 Rugby World Cup final clash with South Africa.
On Saturday morning at 0900 GMT England play in their first final since 2007 as they look to clinch their second title.
Farrell has again been named at inside centre as head coach Eddie Jones selected an unchanged XV from the semi-final win over New Zealand, with the only match day squad alteration coming in the shape of Ben Spencer, who replaces the injured Willi Heinz on the bench.
“Everybody wants to be involved in this game and there are a lot of people that grow up wanting to be involved in this,” said the 28-year-old.
“Now this opportunity has come around you want to enjoy it, you want to go for it and you don’t want to dip your toe in and see what happens - you want to throw all of yourself into it and that is the way we’ll look to go about it.”
The Springboks have twice been crowned world champions in 1995 and 2007, with both games ending in tryless affairs.
England have won the last encounter between the two sides in November 2018 at Twickenham 12-11, but Farrell has urged the team to be prepared for any scenario this weekend.
“We want to be ready for anything that’s thrown at us,” the Saracens back added.
“I think they’ve played a certain style of rugby in the last couple of games and obviously we look at that and see it but at the same time you don’t want to not be engaged in anything else that could happen.
“We’re looking forward to playing what is in front of us and what’s actually happening not what we think might happen.”
Calm camp
Jones takes charge of England for the 50th time this weekend and will hope to continue to add to his superb record at World Cups where he has only lost twice.
Although there is expected to be a huge global audience watching this week, Farrell has asked the team to stay in the frame of mind that has served them so well in Japan so far.
“We’re good, we’re calm, we’ve put some good work in during the week tactically and physically and now it probably takes over thinking about what’s needed for the game.
“The main thing is that we’re engaged and not bothered about things that don’t really matter, and we give off the confidence and the belief that we need for the weekend.
“We’ve been very good at that so far in this tournament but we need to make sure we put the work in to do it again.”
England’s defence coach John Mitchell spoke earlier this week about how he wants the team to relish the physical nature of the Springboks, and Farrell has urged the team to do the same.
“We know that they’re a big, physical team, we know that they’re pretty direct in the way that they play and we’ll make sure we’re in a place that hopefully attacks that.”
