Billy Vunipola tells South Africa to ‘bring it on’ in Rugby World Cup final – The Guardian, Theguardian.com

Billy Vunipola has welcomed South Africa’s promise to fight fire with fire in the World Cup final, telling the Springboks to “bring it on”. England’s defense coach John Mitchell described Saturday’s final as a showdown between the world’s two most powerful teams and Vunipola is relishing the challenge.

After South Africa’s attritional victory over Wales in Sunday’s semi-final, the second row Lood de Jager said, “the only way we know is fighting fire with fire”. England on the other hand, were dominant in the way they dismantled the All Blacks to reach the final.

“It is a similar threat to New Zealand and as you saw on Sunday they are very big people but then again we have a few big blokes on our team,” said Vunipola. “They have already come out and said they want to fight fire with fire and I guess we return it by saying:‘ bring it on ’. It is a final and one of those things you have to front up to and one of their biggest assets and something we have been working on. Like Eddie has mentioned they have many different threats and one is their forward pack. ”

England have received rave reviews for their defensive effort throughout the tournament and in particular against the All Blacks. Sam Underhill finished the match with 16 tackles including two thunderous hits on Kieran Read and Jordie Barrett. “It’s something that you probably can’t measure, but I think the best way to explain it is that it’s quite contagious,” added Vunipola. “It shows everyone it can be done, so everyone else tries to follow in the slipstreams of Underhill, [Tom] Curry and Maro [Itoje]. It’s very easy when you see it. A lot of people talk about it and it’s easy to sit here and say we want to be brutal, but you have to back those words up and those guys are probably the best at leading that area. ”

Vunipola has played against South Africa four times in his career, winning once and losing on three occasions. Two of those defeats came on last summer’s tour of South Africa, the second of which saw Vunipola refracture his right arm. In those two Tests, Vunipola believes he was outshone by his opposite number Duane Vermeulen, who was among the standout performers in both matches, but England’s No 8 plans to ensure that does not happen again.

“When coaches throw words like [brutality] at you, you have to back it up,” said Vunipola. “We have been challenged again to bring the same intensity this weekend, like I said, they have some big players on their team. None more so probably than their second rowers and Duane, those guys are great players and it is a challenge for us up front to give [our backs] that time and space with the ball to do what they do.

“I’ve played against them a few times and [Duane] has got up the last few times so personally I’m going to try my best to win that little battle so to speak and hopefully that will help the team. He just played better. It’s something I think about in terms of trying to help my team as much as possible. I guess he comes into that equation because he’s such a big player for them. I played against him last summer and he was monumental in terms of getting them those two victories. Not just myself, but we’ve got to try and negate the influence of him and everyone else around him. ”