WARRINGTON Wolves’ Ben Westwood felt one of the Fiji forwards went down ‘too easily’ and called him ‘soft’ during England’s final Group A game in Hull yesterday.
The back rower, who had earlier scored an important first ever try for England, ended up being placed on report for the initial challenge, threatening his availability for next Saturday’s quarter final against France or Samoa at Wigan’s DW Stadium.
Things got a little heated surrounding the 75th-minute incident, from which disciplinary chiefs will study video defence to consider if Westwood led with the forearm as he charged into the tackle from North Queens land Cowboys back rower Tariq Sims, whose two brothers also played in the Fiji side.
“I thought we were playing football for a minute the way he went down,” said Westwood.
“He soon got back up after I told him he was soft.
“There was nothing in it, it was just chest and forearm and he decided to play on it a little bit, which I was a little bit disappointed with as there was five minutes to go and they were not going to gain anything from it.
“When I saw him on the floor, I said to him: “What are you doing? Get up you ‘this and that’” and he soon jumped up wanting to have a fight with me so I couldn’t have been that badly hurt.
“We’ll let other people deal with the incident but I’, pretty confident there’s nothing ‘untowards’ in it, so hopefully I’ll be ok.”
Westwood’s try three minutes before half time appeared to settle England, who had fallen 6-0 behind a few plays earlier.
“I think it did come at the right time,” said the 32-year-old, who provided a foil to Kevin Sinfield’s dummy and then got in place to take a pass from his skipper after a tackle came in from the last line of defence.
“It came not longer after their try and it showed us what we needed to do to score, running good lines and taking the line on with the half backs. It put us in good stead for the rest of the game.”
Four tries in the opening 16 minutes of the second half took Steve McNamara’s men out of sight and Westwood said it was rewards for the team holding their nerve during the tight opening exchanges against a side featuring 10 players from NRL or Super League clubs.
“Fiji had a real dig and it was a pretty tough arm wrestle for the first 20 to 25 minutes,” said Westwood.
“They scored a try off it and we needed to bounce back. We showed some real character.
“Fair play to Fiji, they’d obviously trained hard because some stuff they’d got wrong over the past two weeks in defence they were getting right.
“But we knew with the talent in our team that we could stick to our guns and that at some point they were going to fold.
“Fortunately for us, it happened early in the second half. The did kind of fold and we got on top of them.
“It was a great win, one that we wanted. We’ve had a couple of tough games now going into the quarter finals and I think it’s the right way forward for us.”
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