On a day of record-breaking, England’s comeback man Chris Hill made his own but insisted: “I don’t have to prove anything.”
The veteran Huddersfield prop surpassed former front-row colleague James Graham in becoming his country’s most capped World Cup player with 14. Ruthless England ran in 17 tries against minnows Greece as they rattled up their biggest ever tournament win, eclipsing the 76-4 rout of Russia in 2000. It means they topped Group A and are now likely to face Papua New Guinea in Saturday’s quarter-final at Wigan.
But Hill was a shock inclusion in Shaun Wane’s World Cup squad with many people believing his international days were over. He turns 35 on Thursday and had not been involved in any of Wane’s line-ups before this autumn. Hill also missed a big chunk of the season with a serious calf injury suffered in Huddersfield’s Challenge Cup final loss against Wigan.
However, the hard-grafting 2017 World Cup finalist has featured impressively in all three wins, keeping the likes of Leeds’ Dream Team prop Mikolaj Oledzki on the sidelines. Asked if he’d proved his critics wrong, he replied: “I don’t need to prove anything to anyone.
“I’ll prove it to myself. I’ll prove it to Shaun. Waney had faith to bring me into this squad. I’ve not done it for a couple of years. I know I’m good enough to be here. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t do it. It was a bit of a shock (call-up). But you can never turn down playing for England. It doesn’t matter if you’re 21 or 38. You’re a long time retired. These are the best days of your life.”
Sensational winger Dom Young continued his brilliant World Cup, scoring four first-half tries to take his tally to eight in three games. On the other flank, Ryan Hall’s double took him to 39 tries in 40 Tests. Tom Burgess (2), Andy Ackers (2), debutants Kai Pearce-Paul and Joe Batchelor, Tommy Makinson, Matty Lees, George Williams (after a brilliant break from Hill), Mike McMeeken and player of the match Marc Sneyd all crossed, with Sneyd adding 13 goals.
Rugby league was banned in Greece until just three months ago with teams having to play in secret to evade arrest. With a mainly part-time squad, they were always on a hiding to nothing in their first World Cup and duly lost all three games. But this is hopefully just the start of their international adventure and Siteni Taukamo received a huge cheer when he slid over to make it 10-4 early on.
Hill said: “Fair play to Greece, they kept going. They made history by making it to the World Cup and I was proud to face them. But we have to be ruthless. That’s one of our trademarks. We’re coming into some big games now and if we want to win it we have to be ruthless with our actions.”
He was part of the Great Britain side stunned by Papua New Guinea in 2019 so knows just what to expect from the Kumuls if they do meet. Hill recalled: "Lots of the lads had not been over to PNG and experienced that humidity and everything about it. But it was a good learning curve and a lesson we learned pretty harshly. It was another life lesson and it was brilliant to play there in PNG. We know how proud they are. It’s their national sport. They’ll bring it again. We have to be on. But we're ready for it."
