FILE PHOTO: Rugby Union - Rugby World Cup - Australia Captain's Run - Oita Stadium, Japan - October 18, 2019 Australia's Nic White during Captain's Run. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Wallabies scrumhalf Nic White said Australia would be ready for more niggle from England in the third and deciding test at Sydney Cricket Ground on Saturday but would not be "baited" into retaliating.
Australia played with 14 men for more than half of the first test in Perth when lock Darcy Swain was sent off after some provocation from Jonny Hill, while White took an elbow to the face from England prop Ellis Genge in the second test.
After being outmuscled in the first half an hour in Brisbane, White said the Wallabies would be out to make a better start to Saturday's match but more physicality did not mean crossing the line between fair play and ill-discipline.
"Hopefully, we'll look to start the game a little bit more physical up front but we wouldn't be baited into that off-the-ball stuff. We'll leave that for those boys," he told reporters from the Gold Coast on Tuesday.
"You have to be careful around these areas in how you retaliate. Obviously, with the Genge one I was being asked to calm down, I thought I was pretty measured.
"We know there'll be a fair bit of niggle. There has been in the first two games and there will be again in this game but we'll be doing our best to just concentrate on the rugby side of things."
England captain Courtney Lawes rejected the idea that there had been a pre-meditated attempt on the behalf of the tourists to get under the skin of the Wallabies.
"I think we just wind them up because they don't like us very much," he joked at a news conference in the beachside Sydney suburb of Coogee.
"No, I'm skipper and I haven't heard anything of winding them up, we actually talk about not letting them wind us up.
"Boys can get pretty revved up for the games and sometimes emotions can boil over and you do silly things. Both them occasions were looked at and the appropriate punishment was made."
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Peter Rutherford)
