Ford puts England or on the front foot

THERE was a moment six minutes into the second-half which summed up England. Courtney Lawes stole a lineout near Wales’s line, prime attacking ball with the opposition not set up in defence

- PAUL REES

England had laboured to create openings, despite the promptings of Owen Farrell who mixed up his game from the outset, but here was the opportunity to extend their lead to 13 points, wake up the crowd and leave Wales with it all to do.

England failed to react. No one took charge, Wales helped themselves to the ball and won a penalty. Having failed to score a try in Cardiff the previous week, England offered no threat until, with three players in the sin-bin, they kicked a penalty to touch and rolled a maul over the line to seize the momentum.

Steve Borthwick said afterwards it was a victory for spirit and character, which it was. But had Wales had any sort of a lineout, it would not have been enough. “I did not feel they put us under a huge amount of pressure from an attacking perspective,” said Wales’s head coach Warren Gatland. “We shot ourselves in the foot.”

Borthwick made the point afterwards that moulding an attack took longer than shaping a defence or calibrating the set-pieces. Eddie Jones used to say the same, but it is one thing to execute moves and another to improvise and react off the cuff.

England have for too long been a team comfortable in structure but horribly slow to react as if programmed to the point where instinct is expelled. They were at their most effective in the final 15 minutes when confronted by adversity with captain Farrell waiting for his yellow card to be upgraded to a red for a high tackle on Taine Basham that may see him banned for the first two matches of the World Cup.