England have lessons to learn despite easy win over Italy

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/feb/15/england-lessons-learn-italy-ireland-six-nations

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England head to Dublin in a fortnight’s time undefeated but a little crestfallen before the game which is already seen as this season’s Six Nations decider. Crestfallen? Probably. Certainly they will have received something of an earbashing from their coaches because, after the discipline and precision of Cardiff, Twickenham saw a return to the bad old days.

England have spent a season learning they are not best when going through the phases and yet on Saturday they spent half an afternoon inviting Italy into a game that should have been beyond them. If the scoreline at the Millennium Stadium lied because it failed to do justice to England’s second-half domination and probably the best 40 minutes under Stuart Lancaster, then 47-17 at Twickenham also failed to tell the whole story.

That said, I’m not sure how you set up a team to play Italy. With my Worcester hat on, I know that a 50-point victory demands another and another try. Anything less can be seen as failure despite the quality of the opposition and the way you have played. In front of 82,000 and on the back of Cardiff, something other than an arm wrestle was required.

Look at Ireland in Rome, when – minus Jonathan Sexton – they got dragged down in probably the worst of the opening weekend’s matches. Had England gone the same way, following the Cardiff format of box kicking and punting for position, most likely the same would have happened.

Instead, the disciplinarians of Cardiff, Ben Youngs and George Ford, went open – or, more realistically, lateral – from the off and got picked off by the remarkable Sergio Parisse. It could have got very much worse had Martin Castrogiovanni hung on to a delightful little chip from the mighty (in stature at least) Kelly Haimona and Italy were still very much in the game when Luca Morisi went over for the first of his two tries.

The score then, after 49 minutes, was 18-10, but Haimona, the large fly-half, who is not only a childhood friend of Dylan Hartley but also outweighs him, had binned eight very kickable points. Compare and contrast this with Dublin where Sexton had kicked four penalties from four by half time against a France side that should be a lot better than it currently is.

Sexton, more than any other European playmaker, is very much on the same page as his coach, Joe Schmidt, and in between being battered by or clattering into Mathieu Bastareaud, the fly-half imposed that plan to the letter. Without Sexton the result might have been different, but his kicking game – mixing old-fashioned 60-metre spirals with more precise end-over-end Aussie Rules punts – frustrated France into transgressions and each time he was in range, Sexton stepped up to take his reward. England don’t need warning, they’ve seen it before.

However, they also need to work on damaging the happy relationship which Sexton seems to have with Tommy Bowe. Sexton had been out for 12 weeks after a succession of bangs to the head, but his mind was a model of clarity from the off when it came to finding his right-wing. Kick-offs and restarts fell precisely for Bowe to rise above even the tallest of France’s receivers, tapping the ball back to waiting Irish hands. In broken play or from penalties and free-kicks, the crossfield option is always uppermost in Sexton’s mind.

Add a defence which stood pretty solid until France and Philippe Saint-André saw sense and swapped their scrum-halves and you have an Ireland which might not be complete or even the side that won the championship last season, but they are improving. The difference between Rome and Dublin was striking and with Sexton re-familiarising himself with the demands of both Schmidt and Test rugby, England must revert to the less generous style they took to Cardiff. In fact, they will probably be happier playing that more disciplined approach.

On Saturday they were bailed out by a try for Billy Vunipola which clearly left Italy seething at the supposed injustice of it all and two more for Jonathan Joseph, once peripheral to Lancaster’s plans but now, thanks to injuries, clearly a player for whom other sides have to make special plans. I also think – and this might sound uncaring – that England benefited from the five minutes thinking time they had while Mike Brown was being attended to.

France? If Saint-André learns the lesson of Dublin and plays Morgan Parra from the start, they could still be an influence in the championship. They have a blunt instrument of a pack which only gets bigger and better as the game goes on and the bench is emptied, and have talent to die for in the backs, but a hinge which creaks and groans with Rory Kockott at scrum-half.