If England are to emulate New Zealand and South Africa by winning the World Cup they start hosting next week, they will need to force opponents to send out mayday alerts. Although markedly improved on Paris two weeks before, the men in white only looked potent out wide where the pace of Jonny May in particular unsettled the Six Nations champions.
England had repaired many of the flaws that took them to defeat in France, not least the lineout where the return to Geoff Parling led to a steady, if not spectacular, supply of possession, and the steal of an Irish throw five metres from the home line, and their approach to the breakdown area, where they conceded numerous penalties in Paris, was to keep the ball in hand more and off the floor.
In one sense this was the reverse of Paris where England found themselves in with a chance of winning the match in the closing position having been outplayed for the most part. Ireland were two points adrift here with eight minutes to go, clinging to the wreckage of a game that looked to have thrown them overboard after 13 minutes when they had conceded two tries the training ground was designed to eliminate.
England at their best resemble England at their worst in that they neither scale the heights nor plumb the depths. They played with a general constancy that marks them out as a hard-working, organised, well-drilled and motivated side but one which is short on players who would be widely recognised as world-class. It was a point made in the week by Rob Andrew, the Rugby Football Union’s professional rugby director, when he said that the bulk of the squad should be peaking by the time of the 2019 World Cup.
It was a statement of the obvious but generated some froth, mainly because of who had said it rather than what he had said. England, with just three players armed with 50 or more caps and only one of them likely to start against Fiji next week, Dan Cole, are contenders for the World Cup mainly because they are playing all their matches at Twickenham, with the exception of the group minnows who are being indulged in Manchester.
It is not a ground where South Africa have feared to tread for a decade and it holds few terrors for the All Blacks, but playing at home before a partisan crowd gives an honest but unremarkable side a needed extra few per cent, something that dragged New Zealand across the line in the final against France four years ago when the occasion stripped them of many of their points of difference.
Where the three warm-up matches have provided an uplift for England is out wide, which even in the Six Nations was a corridor of uncertainty with Jonny May dropped for the encounter against Ireland in Dublin after showing erraticism in defence and attack having appeared wound up with no sense of where to go.
May now has a sense of direction. Having scored a try against France here last month through his pace, his score after three minutes against Ireland was more down to his strength, first forcing his way through a tackle by Tommy Bowe, who all afternoon looked some way short of his best, and then leaving Simon Zebo on the floor.
May had a second try ruled out on 24 minutes, when he accelerated passed Robbie Henshaw who had lined himself up to tackle the wing into touch, and the moment of the match came in the second period when, from a standing start, he left Jamie Heaslip in a statuesque pose with a flick of the foot. With Anthony Watson adding to his two tries against France with another after catching George Ford’s cross-kick from the hapless Zebo, England have two of the best finishers around.
Their problem is that as a team they are far from the finished product. The World Cup is about winning matches: margins are for statisticians, but such was the rank ordinariness of an Ireland team not far from full strength that England, even allowing for the composure they showed to see out the match after Ireland, from nowhere, pulled to within two points of the hosts, they squandered opportunities.
They had a try disallowed in each half. Richard Wigglesworth, a replacement for Ben Youngs who was as effective here as he had been passive in Paris, forced his way over the line after Owen Farrell has wasted a four-man overlap by bouncing a pass in front of Mike Brown, only for his try to be ruled out because the video referee spotted Tom Wood in an offside position at the ruck before.
Wood was named man of the match for a display which saw him carry the ball more, although he will not want to see a replay of a fly-half, Jonathan Sexton, stripping him of possession. With Ben Morgan looking energised in his second game at No 8 and Chris Robshaw ensuring that by linking play and keeping the ball off the floor England halved the penalty count against them, there was more nous about England, if not wit.
Ireland, though, were shockingly mediocre, missing more first-up tackles than they would expect to in a whole year. One, Devin Toner’s dreadful attempt to stop Joe Marler, allowed the prop to get into enough of a gallop that saw the scrum-half Conor Murray, one of only two specialists in Ireland’s World Cup squad named in the position, concussed as he finally felled the forward.
Ireland’s tackling was only marginally worse than their distribution which exposed their lack of pace out wide. They were at a different stage of development to England who have to be at their peak against Fiji on a weekend when the Irish will have Canada to contend with, but defeats in successive weeks to Wales and England have left them in need of salvation.
They forced their way back into a match they had barely been a part of through their captain, Paul O’Connell, who on this evidence will have made his final appearance here. A World Cup, though, is not about form or rankings, as New Zealand found to their exasperation after 1987, but dealing with seven weeks unlike any other. England are the ones with home comforts.
