England can take a lot of positives, says Hill

England prop Chris Hill believes he and his teammates can take a lot of positives out of Saturday’s 28-20 defeat to Australia.

Hill and George Burgess were making a particular impact as the starting props in what was a dominant first 20 minutes.

Their effective carries and strong defence helped to establish a 10-0 lead but Tim Sheen’s side struck back to claim the win.

“We managed to put to bed our performance against Italy last weekend and that was something we don’t ever want to repeat,” Hill said.

“There are massive positives we can take out of that and I actually feel that we should have won it.

“We had a few chances at the end and I believe that we lost the match rather than the Aussies winning it.

“We started the game exceptionally well and took the game to them. That’s the way we wanted to start and I actually think they were shocked by that because they were a little bit flat for most of the game.

“We needed to keep the performance for the full eighty minutes and I think our discipline hurt us in the end.”

Hill still believes that England still have a good chance of being able to make next month’s final despite an initial setback and is hoping for the chance to get another shot against Australia.

“If we’re to go on and win this competition, which I think is a very reasonable aim considering the squad we’ve put together, then the likelihood is that we’ll have to play them again.

“I guess that’ll depend on how the other matches pan out but first we’ve got to put in performances against Fiji and Ireland.

“It’s no good assuming that we can just turn up against them because we can’t. We have to go in with the right mindset because many of these teams are boosted by Super League and NRL talent.

“But yes, I still believe it’s a very realistic aim to win the tournament and we’ll be knuckling down this week to fix up after this game.”