England urged not to overreact to 'Pool of Death' Rugby World Cup draw by former captain Lawrence Dallaglio

Lawrence Dallaglio has urged England not to overreact to the 2019 Rugby World Cup draw that will leave one of the three top-10 ranked teams in Pool C facing elimination before the quarter-final stage.

England became the first sole host nation and former world champions to be eliminated in the pool stage when they suffered defeats by Wales and Australia two years ago following a draw that put the three in an infamous ‘Pool of Death’. There was a sense of déjà vu in Kyoto on Wednesday when Eddie Jones’s side were pulled out of the pot by former England captain Bill Beaumont as the penultimate team, putting them in Pool C alongside France and Argentina.

With Samoa and the United States likely to join them, England face yet another difficult path to the World Cup knockout stage, and after seeing the strongest Band Three team placed in the same group as his former side, Dallaglio admits it’s possibly the hardest raw that England could have faced.

“On paper it looks like another tough draw for England, doesn’t it?” Dallaglio told The Independent after the draw. “All the Rugby World Cup pools are going to be tough, there’s no doubt about it. As we’ve seen in each and every tournament the quality of every side is going up and up and up, but I guess that when you’ve got only two teams coming out of each pool, as England found out to their cost in 2015, when you’ve got quality opposition like France and Argentina, what we’re going to see is one of the more established sides not making it out of that pool.

“I think England have learned some pretty painful lessons from the last World Cup and they won’t want to repeat that again so it’s a tough pool and if you look at it on balance it looks like the toughest out of all of them.”

Under Stuart Lancaster, England secured four consecutive runner-up finishes in the Six Nations before bowing out of the World Cup earlier than they ever had done before, leaving English rugby at its lowest point. The revival since then has been nothing short of incredible, with Jones instilling a new confidence in a very similar squad that embarked on an 18-matc unbeaten run and back-to-back Six Nations title.

That their unbeaten run ended against Ireland two months ago has not detracted from England’s achievements over the last two years, and the former Wasps and England No 8 Dallaglio that England are already in a good position to ensure the same early exit does not happen in Japan in two years’ time, and also that Jones’s side should continue to improve before the tournament gets underway.

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“I think England both now and by the time they get to the next World Cup [England] are a different proposition and it’s easy to focus on what a difficult draw for England but if you’re Argentina or France, I’m sure they’re not skipping through the tulips themselves either,” Dallaglio added.

“I don’t think they need to do too much, they’ve moved on enormously since 2015 and they’ve been on a run of 18 games unbeaten. Obviously they lost to Ireland but they understand much better now how to control and win games of rugby, it’s pretty simple and I think they’re a team that are going to get better and better at doing that really so I think they’ll stay humble, they’ll work hard – that’s the key – they’re getting more and more experienced .

“You’re talking about how many of these players will be playing in the [Champions Cup] final on Saturday, the England squad is going to be full of players who have so much more experience and a lot of them will be British and Irish Lions by this time next season and I think they’re rugby DNA will be much more enriched.

“They’ll be much more experienced as a group and able to deal with all of the pressure that those major tournaments pose. They were either involved or certainly on the fringes of that last World Cup and that experience, no matter how painful it was, will stand them in good stead.”