McMeniman gets return bout with England
November 13, 2008 - 7:54am
Story by: AAP
Wallabies flanker Hugh McMeniman can't wait to get down and dirty in Saturday's big grudge match with England at Twickenham.
McMeniman's Test starting debut proved a baptism of fire on the 2005 spring tour of Europe - he was in the second row on that infamous November afternoon at Twickenham when the Australian scrum was pummelled by the English pack.
His international career has been a stop-start one ever since and the injury-plagued 24-year-old is now thanking his lucky stars after being handed another shot at the old enemy on Rugby's greatest stage.
McMeniman has replaced Dean Mumm as blindside flanker after proving he'd fully recovered from an ankle injury with a 65-minute display in the second row against Italy last Saturday in Padova.
"It's good to be back. To get two run-on games back to back, that's bloody good for me," McMeniman said.
"I felt good in that game. At least I know where I'm at.
"It's gonna be bloody physical. There's a lot of talk around the scrum. We obviously are just concentrating on our part of it and doing the right stuff technically."
McMeniman has vivid recollections of his last Twickenham experience.
"We were going backwards," he said.
"In saying that, that was a long time ago and we've come a long way as a forward pack since then.
"Italy was a good pack last week and we did real well against them as a whole forward pack in the lineout and the scrums.
"We're very happy with that and obviously we want to take it another step forward this week.
"England definitely step up against us, like we do against the All Blacks and stuff like that - that old English-Australian rivalry but, yeah, they're definitely very physical.
"But we know what's coming. The last two times we've played them, they've got over us in that kind of area, so it's where we've got to step up.
"Last time I was here, it wasn't that happy, but hopefully we can change that."
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By Darren Walton
