It was a foul day, cold, wet and grey, but no one at Twickenham cared too much about that. There was enough heat on the pitch to keep everyone warm. It was a brutal, bad-tempered game, a brawl in a squall.
It seems whatever else Eddie Jones’s provocations achieved, they certainly did not improve the relations between the teams and in the stands the atmosphere was as intense as it has been in a long while. The roar of anticipation in those last few seconds before the kick-off must have echoed right across west London. Twickenham is an intimidating place to come and play these days, which is just how Jones wants it.
It got louder still soon enough. Three minutes in, Anthony Watson leapt up to challenge Rhys Patchell to a catch and the ball broke loose to Owen Farrell. He looked up into the wide empty spaces back behind the Welsh line and walloped through a grubber, though he was 50 metres out at the time. It looked, at first glance, like the ball was travelling too fast, that smart as Farrell’s thinking was, he had overhit his kick. The ball raced away, tumbling end over end towards touch, and then up came Jonny May. If Farrell’s kick had been meant for anyone else, it would have been a mistake but it was meant for May.
May was travelling as fast as a March hare over hot coals. When he started he was 10 metres back from the halfway line, and there were four Wales defenders well ahead of him, cutting across on the angle towards the ball. But by the time May had reached the five-metre line, he was ahead of all four. May reached the ball just as it crossed the tryline, a split second ahead of Josh Adams. He is seriously quick himself but England’s coaches once clocked May’s top end at 10.49m per second, which is the kind of pace that wins sprint medals.
Adams was left flat on the ground while May was up celebrating his first try in the Six Nations. He had played 11 games in the championship, and the barren streak was starting to niggle him. So of course, his second followed soon after, when he popped up to take a deft off-load from Joe Launchbury. This after an irresistible series of short, sharp drives by England’s forwards, which Wales were absolutely powerless to resist. But the first try was the special one. As Jones said, May was the only man on the team who could have scored it.
Warren Gatland felt it was “unlucky” to concede off a turnover that way but it was May’s pace that made the try. And there is nothing much unlucky about that. In fact, since this was a game that was settled by a fingertip’s width, his turn of speed was the key difference between the teams. Because while it looked as though England might pull away, they ended up fighting hard to hang on to the lead May had won them in those opening minutes.
Wales had two fine chances but did not quite have the luck or the pace they needed to take them. The first fell to Gareth Anscombe 20 minutes in. Patchell’s cross-kick bounced off Steff Evans’s knee. Anscombe and Watson chased after it together, and reached it at the very same time. The TMO decided it was not clear who had touched the ball first, though everyone else seemed to have a pretty good idea that Anscombe did. The try was not awarded, which Gatland described as “a terrible mistake”.
If that was a bad break, the other chance they squandered was a mistake. Midway through the second half, when England were flagging, Wales found themselves four-on-one over on the left wing. Scott Williams was the third man along but decided to slide for the line rather than give the final pass. Gatland was already beginning to celebrate the try, when Sam Underhill swooped in, wrapped an arm around Williams’s waist, and hauled him into touch. It was a brilliant tackle but if Williams had only been a little quicker he would have made it. May’s pace, though, is a rare and precious asset.
