Ollie Lawrence: ‘If you don’t dream big, you’re never going to get anywhere’

The centre on why England believe they can beat Ireland in their Six Nations opener and how his apology to fans over Alex Mitchell incident backfired

“That’s a good question,” Ollie Lawrence says as he ponders the reasons why England have lost five of their previous six Tests, even though they were in a position to turn each of those defeats into a precious victory. “I think if I had the answer to that then … ”

The Bath and England centre pauses, lost in thought, and then laughs when I suggest that if he could reel off an immediate answer he would be on his way to becoming Test rugby’s next head coach. “Exactly. I think the main thing for us is seeing off games. We’ve been in the lead, or in a position to win after 60 minutes, in all of those games. So it’s making sure we play the game fully from now on. We’ve hopefully learned our lessons and, going into this Six Nations campaign, we can push on and put things to bed when we’re in the lead.”

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