Nick Purewal looks ahead to England V Argentina as World Cup kicks off

Transcript

00:00 So this is the Stade Vélodrome where England will start their

00:03 Rugby World Cup 2023 Pool D campaign tomorrow when they take on Argentina

00:08 a 9pm kickoff in France. The stadium has been rebuilt several years ago

00:15 so it's vastly different from the arena that

00:19 England played in when they beat Australia here 12-10

00:23 in a 2007 World Cup quarterfinal. It's a fantastic arena for football

00:29 obviously Olympique de Marseille have a fantastic football team

00:32 the venue is phenomenal, the stage is completely set

00:35 England have gone through their final preparations today so everything's ready

00:39 for them. Alex Mitchell will make his World Cup

00:42 debut. A few months ago he was on holiday in

00:44 Croatia thinking that he wouldn't have any kind of chance of making the World

00:48 Cup and now he starts at Scrum Heart for

00:50 England against the Pumas. That's a massive

00:54 massive selection from Steve Porthwick because Mitchell

00:57 and Northampton, Scrum Heart for Leapfrog, Danny Kerr

01:00 and Ben Youngs. Ben Youngs is England's most capped men's Test

01:05 rugby player and Danny Kerr is a long-term

01:10 90 cap veteran of the Test scene so Alex Mitchell has six caps, he'll win his

01:14 seventh cap this weekend so that's a massive leap of faith in many

01:18 ways but Mitchell has been the best performing nine

01:21 for England across this warm-up period and he

01:24 showed enough against Fiji and has really really impressed in training so

01:27 now he gets his opportunity. This is a massive massive game for England

01:32 after three defeats and four games in August

01:35 it is high time, it's long overdue for England to get the game together.

01:38 Mitchell can give them the kind of speed of ball and quality of service they need

01:42 from the breakdown but the fours need to pull it together

01:44 because it's a massive challenge to take on Argentina.

01:47 Interesting to see a new centre partnership of Manu Telangi and

01:50 Joe Marchant, if they can dovetail well and complement each other

01:54 that could be exciting. We've got George Ford at fly half. The biggest thing for

01:57 England now however though is that Steve Borthwick's game plan has

02:00 got to come together. It's make or break this weekend so let's

02:03 see what happens.