England captain Jamie George tells his players to prepare for ‘brutal’ showdown with South Africa at Twickenham as Springboks skipper Siya Kolisi says ‘it’s personal’

England skipper Jamie George has told his players be ready for ‘brutal’ physicality against the world champion Springboks at Twickenham.

The South Africans are hoping to use their feared Bomb Squad to inflict a fifth straight defeat on Steve Borthwick’s side.

‘Whenever you step on field for England in a Test match, you know you are in for a war, you know you are in for a battle, you know it is going to be brutal,’ said George.

‘But the sort of team we want to be, the expectation we have, is that we run and we run hard.’

George and his team are hoping to inflict revenge for last year’s World Cup semi-final defeat, which was marred by allegations of racism by Bongi Mbonambi towards England flanker Tom Curry.

‘Whenever we play against South Africa the rivalry is historic,’ added George. ‘There is always going to be an edge whenever you play South Africa, it is a physical game, it is a confrontational game. 

‘There is always an edge when we play against these guys. Tom is so gutted that he can’t be playing in this game. 

‘There are a lot of guys who are very disappointed, we represent the group as a whole, we are aware that we also represent all the English rugby fans and the whole of England when we play against opposition but the edge that we want to bring to the game this weekend is very clear. 

‘I don’t think we ever want to speak about the motivation behind it too much but there is certainly stuff that we’ve been speaking about this week that can bring out emotion.’

Inspirational Springbok captain Siya Kolisi added: ‘It’s always personal. That’s just how we prepare ourselves for games. It’s got to be personal, it’s another man trying to run through you in game, it doesn’t get more personal than that. 

‘So every game for us is personal. This one, in Twickenham, is a big game and we know what they’ve been going through.

‘We know we’ve got a target on our back at all times. Every single team that plays against us, we’ve got to make it as personal as possible because we want to stay where we are and we want to grow like New Zealand did for so many years.’