{"id":22844,"date":"2025-11-25T03:53:01","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T03:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/matt-dawson-column-a-grand-slam-should-be-seen-as-stepping-stone\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T03:53:01","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T03:53:01","slug":"matt-dawson-column-a-grand-slam-should-be-seen-as-stepping-stone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/matt-dawson-column-a-grand-slam-should-be-seen-as-stepping-stone\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Dawson column: A Grand Slam should be seen as &#8216;stepping stone&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A danger is when teams hit their absolute pomp in the middle of a World Cup cycle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">We&#8217;ve seen it before. But New Zealand and South Africa have both won back-to-back World Cups and been the best team in the world over sustained periods.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It&#8217;s not a negative to be the best team in the world before 2027.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If England can climb the rankings by winning a Six Nations or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c0rpl9v1ly5o\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Nations Championship<\/a> and get themselves to number one or two, they will be in a strong position to reach a World Cup final. That&#8217;s the ultimate goal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">People always talk about peaking too early, but I see it differently. These are the moments where you get all your learnings in, and if you go on a winning run then so be it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">England are not going to go undefeated all the way to the World Cup, and part of the learning process is figuring out how you bounce back from defeat.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In a weird way, I would actually like England to lose a game at some point, because what you don&#8217;t want is their first loss coming in a World Cup knockout match.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">England have been in total control this autumn and have shown they can win ugly too.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Coming off that emotional high against New Zealand was always going to be tough, and in 2019 they were miles off backing up that famous semi-final win.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, they proved against Argentina they can do it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If they do deliver a big performance, say, at Murrayfield, then the challenge is backing it up the following week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">When you are on a winning run you can really drill into the small details, whereas before everything was about selection, style of play, or injuries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">England don&#8217;t need to worry about that now, it&#8217;s about refining the little things that make you a top side.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sir Clive Woodward called those the &#8220;one percenters&#8221;, the tiny details that make all the difference.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Winning teams have the fundamentals locked in, which allows coaches to spend time on everything else.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Loads of the current England squad have never had the chance to focus on those smaller elements.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That is why Ireland and France have put together long winning runs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Now that England know how to win games, they can develop further to push at the top of the Six Nations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c5yj04384eeo?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A danger is when teams hit their absolute pomp in the middle of a World Cup cycle. We&#8217;ve seen it before. But New Zealand and South Africa have both won back-to-back World Cups and been the best team in the world over sustained periods. It&#8217;s not a negative to be the best team in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22844"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22846,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22844\/revisions\/22846"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}