Thursday 23 November 2017 06:48, UK
Josh Hodgson is backing England team-mate Kevin Brown to overcome his latest head knock and start Saturday's World Cup semi-final.
Canberra hooker Hodgson switched to stand-off for the second half of England's quarter-final against Papua New Guinea when Brown was taken off after it was revealed he had suffered concussion in the first period.
Hodgson is prepared to repeat the switch if necessary but says the 33-year-old Brown should be fit to face Tonga at Auckland's Mount Smart Stadium on Saturday.
"It's looking all well for Kev this week so it'll be good to have him back on the field," said Hodgson.
"He was saying it's happened quite a lot through his career. He's had it before where he's had scans and everything's fine.
"He knows his own body, he's been around a long time and is an experienced bloke and he knows when he's right and when he's not.
"As much as people will say he should have or he shouldn't have, Kev knows his own body and, when you get to his stage of his career, I'm sure he makes the right decision by him and doesn't try and be too proud."
After spending the last three years in the NRL with the Raiders, Hodgson is acutely aware of the threat posed by the star-studded Tongans, who recruited Jason Taumalolo and Andrew Fifita among others for their World Cup campaign.
"The middle is huge in any team you're playing especially on this kind of stage," he said. "If you don't win the middle then you're going to struggle to win the game.
"We've got quite a big pack and so have they. We'll be looking to complete as much as we can because we don't want to be doing too much defending, it takes a lot of juice out of you.
"They've got some great players in terms of Taumololo, Fifita and young [Ata] Hingano in the halves who's been really putting his hands up for them.
"Their outside backs are pretty strong and come in and get their sets rolling - across the board they've got good players, as have we. It'll be a great game to watch.
"We'll have to be a lot better than last week and really get our completion rates up and work really hard, especially in defence against some of their big blokes.
"It's always great to be on this stage though, the semi-final of the World Cup and 80 minutes away from a final, but we've got one big job on our hands before we can start thinking about a final."
