Corry discounts complacency - Sport in brief - Evening Standard
       

Corry discounts complacency

England will play for World Cup survival against tournament underdogs Tonga, with captain Martin Corry insisting complacency will not be an issue.

Eight years after England thumped the Pacific Islanders 101-10 in their final World Cup pool game, Tonga will embark on an unlikely revenge mission with the prize for the victors a quarter-final appointment with Australia in Marseille on Saturday week.

Corry nonetheless warned: "We came through the Samoan test, but that counts for absolutely nothing unless we get the same result this week. There is no way (complacency) is going to come into our psyche."

World Cup captain Phil Vickery, available again after serving a two-match ban, is consigned to a bench role as support for in-form tighthead prop Matt Stevens - England head coach Brian Ashton making just two changes following last Saturday's 44-22 victory over Samoa.

Lock Steve Borthwick and flanker Lewis Moody - respective replacements for Simon Shaw and Joe Worsley - join a team which should be good enough to extend England's reign as world champions for at least another week.

Corry added: "All we've had is one decent performance out of three in this tournament.

"In the Tonga versus South Africa game last Saturday [South Africa won 30-25] I think South Africa probably under-estimated them.

"You always expect a degree of confrontation up front when you play the Pacific Islanders, and they took it up a level from Samoa.

"We are certainly not going into this lightly. We are taking Tonga as a very dangerous threat.

"We've seen their games; we've seen their results. We don't need to talk them up any more than that."

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