Ben Youngs issues rallying cry to 'intimidating' England fans to kick Six Nations off with a bang

England's Six Nations opener has been dominated by cries of arrogance against the home crowd, but Youngs believes making life uncomfortable for opponents is exactly what's needed

Ben Youngs wants Twickenham to become an intimidating prospect for opponents (Getty)

Ben Youngs has echoed his head coach’s call for England to add a degree of arrogance to their style on the eve of the Six Nations championship, as he believes the transformation of Twickenham over the last year has been a huge positive for English rugby.

The 27-year-old scrum-half will win his 66th cap for his country when he starts against France on Saturday afternoon in a match that will end a controversial week surrounding an unprovoked verbal attack on English rugby by former Scotland coach Jim Telfer.

Eddie Jones spoke at length of his view, as an Australian on the outside looking in, that the English on the whole are too polite in sport to consistently succeed. The England head coach has been credited (or accused, depending on how you view it) for giving his players a confidence to speak their minds with the coaching team in order to improve the camp across the board. The result so far has been 13 wins from 13 matches.

But Telfer was scathing in his assessment of Twickenham, the crowd and in particular Jones himself, and blamed it predominantly on an arrogance of the English crowd in south west London. Youngs disagrees though, and feels the uncomfortable atmosphere created by the home crowd is a great bonus to have in the red rose’s corner.

“It certainly adds confidence and belief within the side,” Youngs said. “It’s a bit like Saracens and Allianz - you go there and you know you’re going to have to be absolutely on it to come away with anything. Hopefully we’re beginning to build that as a reputation as a side when teams come they think it’s a real tough place to crack.

“That’s something we want to continue to try and build and make it as intimidating, and they know when they prep for the week they have to be on it. That’s down to us to perform and keep continuing the run we’re on. It also adds a prize for the team if we crack it.”

Returning prop Joe Marler added his input on how the crowd can lift the players from as early as the anthems, noting that since they the pre-match music was ditched the acapella version was much more inspiring.

“The crowd has been brilliant ever since we were not so brilliant for them during that 2015 period,” Marler said in reference to the early Rugby World Cup exit. “They have got more and more on board with the success and they interact with the team. It is brilliant running out at Twickenham and hearing those songs again, especially the anthem when they go without the music.”

The French are well aware of the test that poses them at Twickenham. They cross the channel every other year, sometimes more in World Cup years, and since the turn of the century, they’ve managed just twice, one of which was a 2007 World Cup warm-up.

Marler is available to face France on Saturday (Getty)

Captain Guilhem Guirado is adamant that if his side are to end their 12-year losing streak at Twickenham in the Six Nations, they must focus on their own game and nothing more, while forwards coach and former Test hooker Yannick Bru agrees that if they can replicate their performances from the autumn in the narrow defeats by Australia and New Zealand, they will give England something to worry about.

"We want to keep our bearings, whoever our opponent is,” said Bru. “Le Crunch is important in the minds of players and fans and the atmosphere is special but our main concern is what we are trying to do. In November, we attacked a lot but unfortunately we missed out on the little things that win you games and we hope tomorrow we'll find them.

Guilhem Guirado vowed France will focus on their own game rather than England (Getty)

"There's a special emotion in playing England in our first match, particularly as they beat us in the last game of (the 2016 Six Nations) to win the Grand Slam.”

Guirado added: "England have said what they want to do, good for them. We worked hard in November and we competed well against two of the three best nations in the world, Australia and New Zealand. We know where we went wrong in winning these games and we've worked hard. We know England have dominated their matches, but, I repeat, we are just concentrating on ourselves."