COACH Brian McDermott refused to concede England is destined to miss the World Cup semis for the first time after a rampant Tonga ripped away control of their fate.

Thousands of partying Tonga fans blocked the streets around HBF Park in Perth late into the night after Kristian Woolf’s side took a 10-0 halftime lead, survived an opposition revival and surged to a 30-12 win despite losing five-eighth Latu Fainu to a pectoral muscle injury early.

It was Tonga’s first ever win over England and while it was the opening game of the tournament for both teams the match was touted as a sudden death clash for a reason: when it comes to semi-finals qualification, teams who finish on the same points are separated by their head-to-head records rather than points differential.

“I could look at the points, I could look at the points difference, I could start working out the strategies,” said McDermott after his first match in control.

“The roads will lead back to us winning the next two games and winning in a strong way. I understand the need to do that. The game’s a bit harder than making a plan about scoring 30, 40 points.”

McDermott and his charges need Tonga to beat Samoa on November 1 so the head-to-head rule does not come into play. Then they need to rack up a better for-and-against in pool play than the Samoans - no mean feat considering Toa’s 78-4 win over France.

All this presupposed there isn’t a gigantic upset in one or more of the other pool games but in the seven times England has competed as a separate entity (as opposed to Great Britain) in the global showpiece, they have always reached the penultimate stage.

“We know what’s in front of us now - we’ve got to win the next two games” said McDermott.

“We’ve got to improve upon the things that we know we’ve got to improve upon but again, I’ve seen enough tonight that’s telling me we’re heading in the right direction.

“I’ve just been talking about not chasing points and not chasing scoreboards so we’re certainly not going to trip ourselves up … it’s going to be tremendously disrespectful to either France or PNG to suggest we’re going to rack a lot of points up sitting here right now.

“We’re not going to trip ourselves up coming up with a plan about scoring 50 points next week.”

Nevertheless, England can expect the same sort of deep introspection should they miss the semis as New Zealand experienced the same ignominy in 2017.

“It’s great that Tonga’s a really strong nation,” said McDermott. “It’s great that Samoa’s a really strong nation. It’s great that Fiji and PNG are improving all the time. It’s great for the international game. But we’re not going to open a can of worms about England’s position on the international scene.

“All we can do right here, right now is go out and put in a tonne of effort out on the field like we did tonight.”

For Tonga, it was another milestone.

“We’ve done some special things with the Tongan team: beating Australia, beating New Zealand twice, beating Great Britain but we’re still quite new in terms of beating tier one nations,” said coach Kristian Woolf.
“And England are that.

“It’s a big thing to get up and beat tier one nations. It’s only happened a few times and we’ve been a part of a few of those really big wins and tonight was another one. We’re really proud.”

Woolf said Fainu would have scans to determine the extent of his injury.

Reflecting on what England did wrong, McDermott said: “It was a really good contest and when it wasn’t a contest that was more to do with us and the errors that we made. I think we opened up Tonga in that first 20 minutes”.