No panic despite loss to Wales: England - Sports News - Fanatics - the world's biggest events

No panic despite loss to Wales: England

By Adam Hathaway 14/08/2011 02:24:19 PM Comments (0)

England manager Martin Johnson insists he will not be pressing the panic button this week despite his side's 19-9 defeat to Wales in Cardiff on Saturday.

England lost their second World Cup warm-up game despite enjoying the majority of the possession and do not have another game before Johnson has to name his 30-man squad for the World Cup on 22 August.

But the manager says there will be no knee-jerk reaction to England's reverse in Wales, instead there will be a cool analysis of where things went wrong.

"We will calm down," Johnson told reporters after the match.

"We will go away and look at the detail without the emotion in it and we will go from there. There will be some good, there will be some okay and there will be some bad which needs to get better pretty quickly.

"It is not like there were not opportunities, we just didn't finish them off.

"We will get together next week and go through it all and then we go to the tournament. I have not lost sight of the bigger picture here but it doesn't help your emotions straight after the game."

Johnson's squad head to New Zealand after a final match against Ireland on 27 August with the manager admitting he is uncertain of his best line-up after two games against Wales in a week.

"The starting XV has still got a little way to go yet - there is some good depth in the squad. Twenty-eight players have started in both games and put themselves in positions to win Test matches," he said.

Meanwhile Wales captain Sam Warburton has revealed that his side denied themselves a post-match drink after the defeat to England at Twickenham to give themselves the best chance in Saturday's return in Cardiff.

Several high-profile Welsh players including Mike Phillips and Andy Powell have been involved in drink-related incidents this year and Warburton said his squad took the decision to stay off alcohol amongst themselves.

"Wales has had a bad press over drink and the decision not to have a drink was made to get the best recovery," he said.

"The players all thought the best thing to do last week was to get back to the hotel have some good food and get some recovery shakes down."

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