Something is happening in south-west London. The statistics will give you a hint of it – England have won nine Tests in a row and haven’t lost at home all year – but the sight of the way they played here in the second half against Fiji says more about what’s going on than the numbers do.
England, whisper it, turned in a brilliantly entertaining 40 minutes of freewheeling rugby against a Fiji team who are a hell of a lot better than their ninth-placed standing in the world rankings suggests. The Fijians invited England to a dance, and, glory be, Steve Borthwick’s team were delighted to take them up on it. You can only wonder what Borthwick made of it from his spot up in the coaches’ row.
Thirty minutes in, this was going to be a very different article. It had a smart alec intro all about how there’s a big red button in a case on the back wall of the ground announcer’s box at Twickenham, with the words “Only to be used in emergencies” written across the top. Break the glass, and Sweet Caroline starts pumping out around the ground. “Where it began, I can’t begin to know when …” It’s true that the Rugby Football Union is desperate to move on from this sort of thing. These days the Twickenham playlist is tailored to the kids of the people who pay for the tickets.
This game was preceded by an interactive light show, laser display, flamethrowers, a few thousand pounds worth of fireworks, and 15 minutes of hip-hop. But desperate times call for Diamond measures, and half-hour into this match the atmosphere inside the ground was so flat it might have just been run over by Josua Tuisova. Which it had, in a way: England were six points down and seemed to be running out of inspiration already.
Last time these two teams played each other, in the World Cup quarter-finals, England killed Fiji with their rolling maul. They tried to do it again in the opening minutes of this game but Fiji had prepared themselves, and repelled it. England did score soon after but, and this wasn’t in the script, Fiji responded by going downfield and scoring off a lineout maul themselves. That made it 7-5. And in the following moments, you could feel something coming: Fiji were stirring. They broke down the right, twice, the phases rolling on from one to the other through a series of mad offloads.
And all of sudden Caleb Muntz fired the ball out wide to Selestino Ravutaumada on the left wing and he was barrelling ahead, 10, 20 metres into England’s territory, and the ball was flying around the field like a stray bullet ricocheting around a saloon bar. Ping, it was inside with Kitione Salawa, and pyow, Simione Kuruvoli had it, then whiz, it had been chipped up and over Marcus Smith, and then there’s Muntz again, a last-minute reappearance, arriving just in time to gather the ball in and dive for the line. He had Ben Earl hauling on his leg to drag him back away from it, but Muntz’s arm was reaching out and over the line for the score.
It was one of the great Twickenham tries. And it killed the atmosphere inside the ground stone dead. That was when it happened, in a silent moment soon after the score, while everyone was waiting for a scrum to start over again, “Hands, touching hands, reaching out …” as familiar and predictable as another English box kick. This was, you see, all supposed to be about how English rugby had reverted to type.
Shows what I know. Because England didn’t. Time was when they would have doubled down on what they had already been doing. Not any more. Their new attack coach, Lee Blackett, must be having a bad influence on them. In the second half they decided to take on Fiji at their own game. They played some wild rugby and, 10 minutes in, scored a fine try of their own after Tommy Freeman got his hands on the ball in midfield. It was one of those tries where you need to see the replay. Somewhere in among it, Earl threw a brilliant inside pass and Fin Smith stood a couple of tackles up with a pair of sidesteps. And there was Ollie Lawrence, closing on the Fijian tryline like a grizzly bear charging a picnic after six hungry months in hibernation.
There was more. A grubber from Marcus Smith, some wildfire finishing by Henry Arundell. And if Fiji were unlucky to be denied another fine try of their own when Kuruvoli broke downfield but was ruled to have knocked the ball on as he dived for the line, England still deserved to win. It’s been a long time since they last looked this good.
