We must be brave and keep on attacking, says England captain George

LONDON : England captain Jamie George has urged his team to show the "courage" to play for 80 minutes when they face Australia on Saturday after a hat-trick of defeats to New Zealand where they effectively stopped attacking in the latter stages.

Last week's 24-22 defeat at Twickenham came after two July losses when England also led in the final quarter but did not add to their points tally and were overhauled.

Against an Australia team who lost five of their six Rugby Championship matches this year, including a record 67-27 thumping by Argentina, George says England need to keep their foot on the pedal.

"We're going to want to go out and play with courage and be brave and take teams on and never sit back," he told reporters.

"The challenge is, can we continue to do that for 80 minutes? There is a fine line between being relentless and almost reckless, but we're very clear about how we want to go about things.

"The more that we can do that, the more that we can then back that up with pressure off the back of clear execution, I think we can overcome a good team."

  After seeing George Ford's late penalty hit a post and then his drop-goal sail wide in a thrilling finale last week, the Twickenham crowd were in forgiving mood, but there will be no such understanding of any repeat of coach Steve Borthwick's "we're a young team who are developing" mantra should things go wrong on Saturday.

Not only have England won 10 of the teams' last 11 meetings since their 2015 World Cup pool loss, they have usually won convincingly. In the last four games at Twickenham, England have won with an average 19-point margin and the closest the Wallabies have got was a 16-point, 37-21 defeat in 2016.

Even with wily coach Joe Schmidt plotting a way to