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Henry Pollock’s starring role in England’s response to the haka was designed by Jamie George, who revealed he took inspiration from the 2019 World Cup semi-final win and admitted they risked poking the bear before clinching a first home win over the All Blacks in 13 years.
George admitted he was the brains behind England’s decision to initially line up as usual while the All Blacks performed their traditional war dance before breaking out into a V-shape. As the eldest player in the squad, George was intentionally on one end with Pollock, the youngest, on the other. The captain Maro Itoje stood at the point of the V, which, in truth, looked more like a C-shaped formation.
Pollock was seen licking his lips in response to the haka with George joking England had their doubts over allowing Pollock – who has a habit of getting under opponents’ skin – such an important task.
In 2019, England performed a more polished V-shaped response before a stunning performance to down the All Blacks for the first time in seven years and reach the World Cup final. Afterwards Mako Vunipola admitted “we knew it would rile them up”, though England were fined because a handful of players crossed the halfway line because World Rugby regulations state that opposing teams must remain in their own half when receiving a cultural challenge.
George and Pollock had no such trouble with the All Blacks themselves edging towards England’s formation as they performed the haka. George acknowledged he wondered if there would be a repeat of a 1997 incident when Richard Cockerill ended up nose to nose with Norm Hewitt but revealed England’s connection with the Twickenham crowd was a key factor behind deciding to bring a response.
“It’s always a difficult thing when you don’t want to get too complicated,” said George. “The theory was that the oldest would be on one side, the youngest would be on the other. So I was on one side, Henry Pollock was on the other. We were quite reluctant to give it to Henry because we weren’t sure what he was going to get up to – with Maro in the middle of the V.
“You can [poke the bear] and we won’t necessarily always respond to it. But at the same time we felt like I put it to Maro and Steve [Borthwick]. And I had an idea and I thought ‘why not?’. I quite liked the idea so they got on board with it. Maro said as long as we don’t have to have too many rehearsals.
“We wanted to replicate 2019 because we hadn’t done it here at Allianz which is something that I thought was pretty cool. I felt like starting in a flat line and then heading into the V would be pretty cool. I thought their response to it was also good and I thought it’d be one of those old school sort of days where we’d be face to face. We speak a lot about the connection with the fans and making match days at Allianz a really fun and special thing to come to. A response like that is great but then backing it up with the performance was the most important thing.”
George also urged his teammates to celebrate becoming only the ninth England side to defeat the All Blacks in style before Borthwick’s side set their sights on an 11th straight victory against Argentina next Sunday. “Be present, be present, enjoy it, this is history, this is a big win,” he added. “When I spoke to the boys on Thursday I said like people still talk about 2012, people still talk about Manu in 2012, people still remember Brad Barritt’s try in the corner in 2012.
“Hopefully now we’re giving the fans, the 82,000 fans that came here, the millions of fans who watched it on TV an opportunity to speak about us like why would we not celebrate that, why would you not have a really good time together.”
