Late on Saturday afternoon a brilliant red sunset settled over south-west London, making a fitting backdrop for a bloody match at Twickenham. It was a game that contained, as Eddie Jones said, more drama than your average EastEnders omnibus. It was bracketed by two red cards, one for Elliot Daly four minutes from the start, another for Enrique Pieretto four minutes from the finish. In between, including all the extra time at the end of the first half, there was an 80-minute melee, which looked, at times, like one of those cartoon bust-ups in which everything is a blur of flying fists and feet. It was a match you would have to watch back even to begin to understand exactly how it all went down.
When it was over, England – reduced to 14 men for the majority and 13 for a good long stretch – won by 13 points, 27 to 14. It was one of their very best victories here in recent years and, along with their wins in the first two Tests against Australia back in June, the most significant marker yet of their extraordinary progress under Jones. He had promised that this match would be a test of his team’s “manhood”. It turned into something much tougher than that, an examination of their ability to adapt, improvise and overcome. It wasn’t just the loss of Daly, Dan Cole was sent to the sin-bin, too, and Billy Vunipola missed the second half because of an injury.
It was carnage from start to finish, but the first five minutes were particularly brutal. England, their ears still ringing with Jones’s admonishments, started hard. Juan Martín Hernández was hammered down in a collision with Jonny May out on the right wing. May’s shoulder caught Hernández’s temple, and he was sent off for a head injury assessment. Hernández was back five minutes later, as a replacement for the inside centre Santiago González Iglesias, who was sent off for an HIA of his own after another big hit that left him face down in the grass for a minute or more. Hernández seemed to be lost in a fog for much of the rest of the match.
In the short gap between those two clashes, the moment that defined the match. Argentina’s No8 Leonardo Senatore leapt to catch a kick, Daly ran into his dangling legs. Senatore flipped like a caber and fell on to his neck. His head bounced up and down off the ground. Daly held up his hands to proclaim his innocence. But the look on his face suggested that he knew what he had done, and what the consequences would be. As the referee, Pascal Gaüzère, said: “I’ve just one choice.” The fact Senatore landed on his neck meant it was a straight red.
Dylan Hartley gave Daly a consoling pat on the back as he left the field, then set himself to address what had suddenly become one of the most severe tests of his England team yet. Like all good sides, they try and practise for moments like these. A man down, the entire match ahead, they changed up their original gameplan. Jones explained afterwards that he felt the match hinged on how well his senior players communicated with each other. He picked out Courtney Lawes and Chris Robshaw. But that felt almost unfair, since almost every single player left out there made an outstanding contribution at one point or another.
The match got more chaotic. May was taken out in the air by Juan Pablo Estelles. But unlike Senatore, May was facing the ground as he came down, and managed to get an arm out to break his fall. The crowd called loudly for him to Estelles sent off, but he escaped with a penalty. Argentina did lose a man to the sin-bin soon after, when Matías Orlando deliberately knocked down Robshaw’s pass to Tom Wood, in a desperate attempt to stop England from scoring a try. Argentina battled back in a series of scrums on England’s line.
It was during this spell that England then lost Billy Vunipola, who bust his knee, and Cole, sent to the sin-bin for collapsing a scrum. They also gave up a try, which meant that Argentina were back in the match at 16-7. And for seven minutes after half-time, they had a two‑man advantage. They made it tell, with a superb move, passing the ball back and forth across the field until England’s line tore open and Santiago Cordero scored. The conversion made it a two‑point game, then, with 30 minutes to play. But that was as close as it ever got.
For Argentina, this was the final match of a very long season, one which has seen them take 50 long-haul flights in the last 12 months. They have crossed continents, and popped up in cities as far apart as London, Johannesburg, Auckland and Tokyo. A sharper side might have made England pay more heavily than they did. But still, the way England held on to control of the game was brilliantly impressive. They were, as Jones said, “flexible, adaptable, and courageous”. Beat Australia next week and they will have won every game they have played this year. When they look back on what they have achieved in these 12 months, they will recall this victory as one of the most remarkable of all.
