England star Henry Slade in Six Nations rallying cry as he promises France that Red Rose will fight fire with fire
HENRY SLADE took aim at France and warned them that England plan to: "Attack, attack, attack!"
Six Nations defending champions England have already bottled their title defence and now plan to ruin Les Bleus' Grand Slam dreams.
Eddie Jones' side have been hammered for poor discipline and boring kicking tactics since the autumn. And with nothing to play for now, they are aiming to get stuck into Le Crunch at Twickenham.
After the team came in for lots of flak, Slade said: "We are definitely looking to go as hard as we can.
"We want everyone to be behind us and we’re working as hard as we can for that.
"Hopefully we can do the job. We've got better. We've definitely made a mindset shift.
"If we get on the front foot that’ll be brilliant. If not, we’ll stay in the fight and hopefully come out on top.
"Sometimes our first option was to kick rather than to run and we've definitely shifted in the right direction in terms of having a more balanced game and wanting to take people on and run.
"We've got a lot of talented individuals in this team, talented ball carriers up front, people with exciting footwork and pace out wide.
"We told ourselves to get genuinely excited about the opportunities we can put ourselves in to take people on. As the tournament has progressed we played more expansively.
"Even though the scoreline doesn't say so against Wales, we played some really good stuff, but we just shot ourselves in the foot in that last 20 with our indiscipline.
"If we can sort that out we're on to something good."
Slade goes head-to-head with France's star centre Virimi Vakatawa and England will also have to keep pocket-rocket scrum-half Antoine Dupont quiet after they were destroyed by Les Bleus in last year's championship.
Centre Slade added: "They’ve got a lot of strong runners and dangerous runners. We know we’re going to have to be defensively very sound.
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"They’ve got threats all over the park. Everyone talks about Dupont and the threat he brings. Yes, he does bring a big threat but there’s a number of potent threats in the backline. We’ve got to stop them all.
"We all know Vakatawa's a dangerous runner. He’s got good footwork and he’s a strong lad. He’s a very dangerous guy so you can’t allow him time and space.
"It’s not about one on ones. It’s about us putting collective pressure as a team – if he beats one guy, the next guys there to clear him up."
