England v Papua New Guinea: ‘Rinse and repeat’ is England’s mantra for crunch World Cup showdown

A 30-10 loss against Tonga in their opening game has left England in danger of not making the semi-final stages, despite hammering France 82-0 last weekend.

They must beat Papua New Guinea in Wollongong but then wait until Sunday when they have to hope that Tonga beat Samoa, who England must also make up a 68-point deficit on.

While the France triumph will have provided plenty of offensive confidence for McDermott’s players ahead of Friday’s crunch encounter, they are fully aware of the huge physical challenge they will face from a PNG side coached by former Wakefield Trinity and Keighley Cougars centre Jason Demetriou, now coach of London Broncos.

“They will provide a stiff test and it was a contest for a fair while against Samoa there,” said McDermott. “Samoa are bang in form, aren't they, in terms of attack. So it would be hard to try and judge them on that.

“But they're always a physical task, PNG and if you don't step up on that physicality level and get your mindset ready for that, then you're never in the contest.

“Again, we need to score points, but we can't get to the points first. We've got to get to the physicality first, and we've got to manage a very physical team, a very dominant team.

“They're well coached by Jason Demettriou there, who's got a chunk of players who play in the British game as well, so I think they're going to be really well co-ordinated and the physical challenge will be a big one.”

Given how important the points could be in deciding whether England make the final four or not, McDermott knows his players need to get the balance right, which means sticking to the gameplan.

“There's a discipline in that we don't start looking for things or searching for things outside of how we want to play,” said the former Leeds Rhinos and Featherstone Rovers head coach.

“And that was a really impressive trait against France, because we knew we had points in us and they weren't coming for that first 20.

“But we didn't try to do anything different, we didn't start playing erratically, we didn't start throwing the ball in a direction that we didn't want to play - we just stuck to the task and then it opened up.

“And then the second most impressive thing is that, when the scoreboard started to tick over, we didn't start doing things too much either.

“Every team - and I've been involved in so many teams – where you're winning by a large margin, we either take our foot off the gas because we think the job's done, or we start to overplay, and we didn't (against France).

“We kept it tight, we stuck to the game model, and I was really impressed with that. And it's not so much the 82, it's the zero which was very impressive. It's the fact that we just put it on rinse and repeat, the things that we're trying to do with our game plan and our game model, we didn't really get away from it.”

One big call in terms of McDermott’s starting line-up has been the decision to go with Hull KR’s Jez Litten at hooker, replacing Wigan’s Brad O’Neill, who drops to the bench.

And while McDermott admitted conversations with players being replaced are rarely easy, he has been impressed with the attitude of every single member of his squad.

“The players have been great, they've been absolutely fantastic to work with,” he said. “They all understand the concept of it being a squad effort - it’s not just a team effort.

“So we've got a specific task this weekend against PNG and I think it'll be a stiffer test than it was against France last week.

“Again, we find ourselves in another similar situation – and very unique as well – that we don't just need to beat them, we need to beat them convincingly and picking a team that's best suited to that is the main task.

“So they're not the easiest conversations to have, but they are when the player themselves have got a load of humility and Brad was great.”

Litten’s Rovers team-mate Mikey Lewis, produced an impressive 20-minute cameo from the bench against France, scoring two tries and is a substitute again against PNG.

The 25-year-old scrum-half headed Down Under on the back of a difficult season at Hull KR, but McDermott has been nothing but impressed by his input since the squad came together – something he attributes to the player himself, as opposed to anything he or his coaching team have done in Australia.

"I think Mikey Lewis has done a lot of work with himself,” said McDermott. “I think anything he's got out of it has been to do with him.

“I don't think it's anything to do with us or me. He arrived with us in a really good frame of mind. I know he's had a difficult back end of the year, Mikey Lewis, as has Hull KR but he came in with a great mindset.”