Nottingham Club Captain Tom Holmes was full of excitement after England’s victory over New Zealand in the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup on Sunday morning.
The 29-year-old says it was one of the best games of rugby you’ll see, and is now looking forward to the final on Saturday.
He told BBC Radio Nottingham: “It was a brilliant game. It was truly one of the best rugby games you’ll see in terms of how tense and exciting it was. I jut knew that if England got themselves where they needed to be and to hold momentum then they would win the game. After an hour I said to the people I was watching with ‘This is going to be us in the final if we keep this up’.”
England overtook their opponents New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup rankings after they beat them 19-7 on Sunday morning to progress through to final, but Holmes says the All Blacks are the team that set the standards in professional rugby.
“They (New Zealand) are the number one team in the world and they have been for a while,” said Holmes. He added: “They’ve set standards in the professional game and we follow things off them. They have a culture where rugby is the number one sport and they are the leaders. For us (England) to play the way we did and shut them down in the way we did was the only was we could go and win against them, the lads did that really well.”
The final will take place on Saturday 2nd November, 9:00am kick off UK time, and Nottingham Lock Tom Holmes suggests England are favourites going in to the game and that he would love to see his country bring home the gold.
He said: “I would love to say that we (England) are the favourites now after that game. If you watch their (South Africa) game against Wales it was a little less entertaining but their front pack is bigger than majority of other teams. They are big and enforce their way on the game. If England can do the same as what they did against New Zealand and make them have to defend and shut down attacking plays it will tee us up nicely to come home with the gold.”