Jack's shriek of pain was the stuff of nightmares

A much better performance from England and indeed a much better performance from Italy in a sparky occasionally feisty match that maintained your interest but not for the first time I was left wondering how serious rugby really is in minimising serious injury.

- BRENDAN GALLAGHER

The agonising, blood curdling shriek of agony that echoed around Twickenham when Jack Willis, his studs stuck in the turf, was unceremoniously rolled over in an unnatural position as Italy cleared him out, was the stuff of nightmares. It certainly stayed with me for a couple of hours yesterday evening.

Willis has already suffered more than enough injury heartache for one so young and you fear the worst while hoping for the best when the consultants do their stuff this week and assess the damage.

What is so frustrating from the outside looking in though is how the breakdown has been allowed to resemble chucking out time at a Wild West saloon. There’s an element of the Emperor’s clothes, nobody in officialdom will state the bleeding obvious about so called clear-outs being the scourge of the modern game.

I’ve been banging on about this ad nauseam for nearly a decade along with others like Ben Ryan so I won’t rehearse all the old arguments other than to say that if the breakdown area was refereed according to the law there would be another 15 penalties in that one area per game. What everybody has forgotten, not least the refs, is that you have to be bound on to another player to make contact legally. Law 9.2 states: “A player must not charge into a ruck or maul. Charging includes any contact made without binding on to another player in the ruck or maul.”

When was the last time you saw anybody clearing out while bound on? To salvage the game as a spectacle referees, with the encouragement and connivance of the authorities, allow players to fly in off their feet – often from an offside position – and wipe out opposition players who are legally minding their own business, often nowhere near the ball or a long way behind it.