Inspiring England captain Owen Farrell has revealed the one moment about his milestone 100th Test cap that felt awkward this weekend. It wasn’t anything that took place on the pitch on Saturday in the bonkers 25-all draw with the All Blacks. Instead, it was the glowing tributes paid to him the previous night by his teammates that left him feeling a touch queasy.
It was February 2012 when the now 31-year-old was first capped for his country and he has now become only the third men’s player to earn 100 England caps, following in the footsteps of Jason Leonard and Ben Youngs.
Farrell, though, wasn’t getting caught up in the hype surrounding his new membership of a very exclusive England club. “It’s a special game anyway,” he said about the rare match with the All Blacks.
“The lads said a few things last night [Friday], which was really nice. I’m not used to it, felt a bit awkward but it is special. I don’t want to downplay it. I’m not taking it for granted, but there was a job to do this week in a big game and the most exciting thing for me was the performance of the lads. It was a special game and I’m glad I was part of it.”
With England having emerged with a draw that looked unattainable until the final minutes, Jones chided the media at his post-game briefing for their generally hard-nosed perception of Farrell and called on them to show some kindness for a change to the captain.
Let’s hear some more from Farrell about what he felt was the most exciting part of his big day, the performance of the lads. “The belief shown by the team in that second half was outstanding. I felt we were always in the game even though it didn’t reflect it, especially on the scoreboard in that first half.
“As Eddie said, some other teams, even better teams, would have dropped off and it didn’t feel like we were going to and then in the second half, we knocked on the door for a good 20 minutes at the start of it and didn’t quite get the points back that we thought we wound but we stayed at it and had proper belief. I’m proud of the team for that.”
Especially pleasing, he added, was the determination of the youthful England half-backs. “Jack van Poortvliet didn’t look flustered after he made the mistakes. There are loads of young lads that come into Test rugby and go into a big game like today and make a mistake and just don’t want to make another mistake.
“He wasn’t like that, and I thought Marcus (Smith) was brilliant. I thought he was lively. I thought he was at it the whole game and when the opportunities came he was ready for them.”
