Brian McDermott hails ‘enormous’ effort as England thrash France at Rugby League World Cup

England coach Brian McDermott hailed the attitude of his side after they kept their World Cup semi-final hopes alive with an 82-0 demolition of France in Perth.

England were left needing to win their two remaining pool matches by big margins, and for other results to go their way, after losing their opening match to Tonga last week.

They did all they could as they ran in 14 tries in a clinical display at HBF Park on Saturday, with McDermott left to wonder what his side could have achieved with a longer build-up to the tournament.

McDermott said: “I think what we’ve done today, given the context, is just enormous.

“We had to win big but, as any coach will tell you, nobody thinks like that. You think, ‘we’ve got to win’.

“We had some real good, candid conversations this week about what that actually means and we’ve been able to do that without getting distracted in chasing points.

“Everything was measured, everything was inside the game model, everything was what we planned to do – well, most of it at least.

“Whatever the results are next week, we want to finish strong against PNG (Papua New Guinea) as well, and if that means we’re going home next Sunday night, that will be a big disappointment to us.

“But I’m not sure what more we could have done.”

McDermott, who is new in the role, had limited preparation time with his squad and there were no warm-up fixtures.

“We’ve been together for five field sessions only,” he said. “So we’re building something here and there was a little bit of that on show today.

“Certainly the tries we scored just before half-time are what we’ve been chasing. We can see how good that’s going to be.

“If this group’s together for a process or a long build-up to a tournament, we could achieve some special things but, over a short space of time, it’s been remarkable really.”

After a frustrating start, England took command with six tries, including three from Herbie Farnworth, in the latter stages of the first half. Dom Young also finished with a hat-trick and AJ Brimson crowned a player-of-the-match display with the final try.

McDermott said: “I thought we found our groove around about 25, 30 minutes, and then we scored a couple of tries, maybe three tries, back to back.

“But another pleasing factor is that when the game got tough, and we weren’t allowed to score tries for fun, we buckled down and defended and worked hard. That’s a really good sign.”