Tries from Freddie Steward and Marcus Smith helped England to a 21-17 win in Sydney, built on a resolute defensive effort, particularly in the closing stages when Australia threatened a late comeback. Lawes spoke of the grueling nature of the season, having ended the British & Irish Lions series last August, and Eddie Jones paid tribute to his captain’s resilience after the match. Lawes also highlighted how Australia had talked about “shutting down the Pommies” in the buildup, while scrum-half Nic White had highlighted England’s off-ball antics and taken issue with an incident involving Ellis Genge in the second Test in Brisbane. As a result and despite the fatigue at the end of the season, Lawes revealed that England had the perfect motivation to get back to the well. He said: “We saw a lot of things in the press from their players and what they were saying – some people were targeting Gengey and some people were calling us Poms and whatever. “It’s all good fuel for our tank and every good team uses that as motivation. We just stuck to it. We’ve fought for each other… I mean, they give us some fuel in the press to be fair. They were talking about us. This spurred us on a bit, but the boys stuck together, stuck to our guns. “It was tough. I’ve talked throughout the tour about how, as a team, we want to have that feeling of playing for each other. When you’re in these kinds of scenarios, that’s the only thing that drives you. Your body is broken, you’ve been playing for 11 months, you’re at the end of a tough tour and you’re down. What are you going to do? You will look for your companions. I think we showed what it means to us.” Genge echoed Lawes’ comments, saying: “They went to the press with a bit of a travesty and got us fired up about the last one.” Jones – who made the bold and decisive call to replace Danny Keir with Jack van Portvliet before half-time – led England to two series wins in Australia, having gone 3-0 up in 2016. That triumph came on the back of However, a Six Nations grand slam and Jones believes this series victory was more difficult to achieve. “That was tougher,” he said. “We had a more established team in 2016 coming off the back of the grand slam and off the back of a 2015 team. We’re building that team right now, we’ve got a good group of players and we’ve got all these guys coming in, so it’s been a completely different experience. We had to fight like everything today, we hung in there, we weren’t at our best, which happens sometimes, that is rugby. When you fight like that and win a game like that, it’s a big achievement from the team.” The Breakdown: sign up and receive our weekly rugby union email. Jones will now take his assistants to Melbourne to visit AFL and NRL teams in a bid to develop his staff’s training methods but, reserving particular praise for Lowes, urged his captain to put his feet up in the summer . “I just want to say for Courtney, for a Lions player who played the last Test in August, to play a game like that in July is an incredible effort,” he said. “It just shows what you can do, but he needs a good rest now.”
