"Relieved it came off!" – Tommy Freeman: England wing tried to 'play it cool' after awesome try assist against Japan
Today at 11:44 AM
The most replayed moment of England’s win against Japan this past Sunday, was the try assisting pass from Tommy Freeman mid-way through the second half. The Northampton Saints wing chased down Henry Slade’s searching kick that was destined for the touch-line, but was able to shift an ‘around the back’ offload, directly to George Furbank to run in for the try.
Freeman admitted after the match, that he did his best to ‘play it cool’, as he knew full well how impressive the piece of skill was. The highlight was shown time and again on the Allianz Stadium big screens, with Freeman doing his best to focus on the next task at hand. The Saints man said how he was in fact relieved that the pass found it’s intended runner, as he would never had heard the end of it should the ball have not gone to hands.
“I’m just relieved it came off because if I didn’t I would have had it in the neck. We get the permission to do things and put ourselves out there, luckily it came off.”
“I tried to play it off and focus on the next job. I’ve been getting a lot of stick. It's going to be posted everywhere, it’s going to be ‘ah just try and play it cool. It was good it came off and I’m happy with it.”
“I was on the move and I was running quite fast so if I’d carried on that motion I’d probably have gone into touch. I could probably have tried to off-load it a different way but I thought let’s have a crack at it. Luckily ‘Furbs’ (George Furbank) was there to catch it.”
Freeman expressed how he had in fact attempted a similar play in the proceeding training week, as England prepared their own secret skills to take on Japan. The Saints man added that having his green, black and gold teammates around him was a special bonus this week, as he rounded off a back three with Northampton flyers George Furbank and Ollie Sleightholme.
“To be fair, I’ve actually done that I lot in training this week! I was practising it a little bit and weirdly the opportunity came. You’re always trying things! If it’s the right place and the right time, you back yourself to do it. It’s not something that pops up all the time, I won’t be running around forcing it!”
“We had a back three of Northampton Saints lads, which was extra special. Playing club rugby and then on the international stage with your mates makes it that little bit easier, you know their cues, what they’re doing and how they move.”
Looking back on the Autumn Series from a more general stance, Freeman believes that there were a good few missed opportunities for England to record some memorable wins. There is no denying that England were hurting after the last-ditch defeats to New Zealand and Australia, whilst the Springboks proved their class once again with the nine point win leaving little to chance.
“The only thing I would say is that we didn’t move the ball to space and that’s something we’ve looked. There were opportunities missed. There are safe options and riskier options. As a tam we need to be on the front foot and taking opportunities because at this level there aren’t many that will come up.
“When we’ve got an overlap and we’ve got numbers on our feet we’ve got to take the chance. Overall, we challenged these big teams and we want to be associated with these big teams. We were eight points up against Australia at one points, we were up against New Zealand as well.”
“We narrowly missed out on those games. If we can piece it all together we can be threatening team.”
“We’ve finished on a high and did stuff that we wanted to do in the whole campaign. Looking back on it personally, I’d want to get my hands on the ball a whole lot more. There are probably ways I could do that and feed information to get that a bit more. Contestables (high kicks) is something we go after a lot and I thought I disrupted a lot in those big games.”
The post “Relieved it came off!” – Tommy Freeman: England wing tried to ‘play it cool’ after awesome try assist against Japan appeared first on Ruck.
