Everything Shaun Wane said after Ashes loss as injury update given and Mikey Lewis role queried

Shaun Wane faced the media after England were beaten for the second successive weekend to lose the Ashes with a Test match to spare.

The hosts were beaten 14-4 at Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium in a much-improved display in many areas, but their attacking potency proved to be their undoing once again.

Here is everything Wane said after the game..

Initial thoughts..

“I’m proud for the majority of the game. For 70 minutes we were good, we switched off ten minutes after half-time and that hurt us immensely. The first try was soft and shouldn’t be scored in a Test match. But we did a lot of good things; we just weren’t good enough. They did things better than us when it mattered. 

Was it an improvement on last week?

Someone else has said that to me. It’s very hard for me to think that way at the minute though. They’ve won it and we’ve not. My assistants will think we’ve improved but my overall thought is that we got beat. It’s so disappointing. 

What are your emotions? 

I’m devastated. It hurts, that one. I’m proud that the players had a dig but so disappointed in the moments after half-time. I wanted to see more thrown at them.

They defended well in that first half and there were periods where we had a lot of ball. I wanted us to build pressure in the game and we did that this week. But there’s a bit of detail in that where we could have put them under more pressure.

Are Dom Young and Tom Johnstone injured?

We’ll be okay. We can fix it. We’ve got a good squad. It’ll be 17 fully committed players next week. Tom is okay now, he’s in the changing rooms. 

Did Mikey Lewis come on too late?

That was enough time for Mikey to make an impact. We had it all set up what minutes he would go on, because he can cover us in a few positions.

Changes next week?

There will be changes.

How big a game is it next weekend?

They’ll be obsessed to win 3-0 and we need to be obsessed to make it 2-1. That has to be our obsession, starting tonight and a review tomorrow. It’s going to be a tough week.