England v France: Head coach Shaun Wane turns focus to 2025 World Cup

George Williams is Shaun Wane's new England captain

England head coach Shaun Wane says Saturday's mid-season Test match against France will be the official start of his side's next World Cup campaign.

It's the first game for England since they lost in heart-breaking circumstances as host nation in last year's World Cup semi-finals, going down to a golden point extra-time defeat by Samoa.

But a new-look squad will aim to put that pain behind them when they take on France at Warrington's Halliwell Jones Stadium on Saturday. And Wane says the focus now is on the future and beginning preparations early.

"Everything is about the next World Cup in 2025," said Wane, who has agreed a new contract that will see him lead the side into that next tournament.

"I've picked a squad that I think can do a really good job, and they're at the right age that can fire, improve and get better in time so that they are peaking in 2025.

"I'm excited about how young the squad is. I'm hoping everybody else is. Some of the talent in Super League is really impressive.

"There are players who played in the last World Cup who were [aged] over 30, which is not normally how I pick my teams, but they were the best players.

"We need to get better as a game to make sure we've got more younger players coming through and that's what I've picked. And it's about feeding them information about what is international standard."

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Warrington half-back George Williams will captain the side, taking over from Catalans' Sam Tomkins, who is due to retire at the end of this season.

And Williams rates it as the greatest honour of a career that has seen him pick up winners medals in two Grand Finals and a World Club Challenge.

"It's the best ever," said Williams. "I don't think you can top that. I always looked on playing for England as the top, so this is probably beyond my wildest dreams."

But Williams remains frustrated at the lack of confirmed international fixtures in the run up to World Cup 2025, which will be staged in France.

A three-match series against Tonga has yet to be confirmed for the end of this year. And although there are plans for Samoa to tour Europe in 2024, that has yet to be signed off.

Wane says he would be happy to take his team to the Southern Hemisphere for a viable Test series, if no nations could be persuaded to travel north.

"Absolutely, we just need to play international games," he said. "The strength of our sport is the international game.

"We just need to get some really good fixtures that are going to test us and make sure we are better prepared for the World Cup next time."

In the meantime, he will have to make do with classroom-based get-togethers for his squad between this weekend's match and the proposed Tonga series.

"We're not going to have any on feet (training sessions)," said Wane.

"The players perform in Super League and I learnt my lesson last year on how many times I tried to get them on the field. We had to cancel it because of injuries.

"The players play a lot of games and we'll gain, not as much, but enough with off-feet meetings. I'll show some footage of what the players are doing and what they need to do better.

"They'll be once or twice a month and the payers will get feedback weekly and hopefully that will be enough.

"If the players think it's tough in Super League, internationals are a totally different ball game.

"A lot of those players don't know me, so I'm looking forward to feeding them information about what I'm about and what it's like to be an England player so that we can get into the French game and see how we go."

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