Eight minutes from full time Mike Brown was on his hands and knees – an odd way to celebrate a try, and his second of the match too, to put England 15 points up and out of sight. Too sore to smile, too spent to move, Brown stayed down even as his team-mates tried to haul him up to his feet and into their arms. In the end they turned their backs on him and walked back towards their own half, 14 battered men. The scene summed up this battle of a match, brutal, messy, desperate. If England had any illusions about just how hard it will be to win the World Cup, they will be long gone now.
Brown’s try, together with another minutes later by Billy Vunipola, meant the winning margin ended up looking a lot more comfortable than the match itself. It was a win, and one which earned a bonus point, but, as Stuart Lancaster was quick to admit at the end, his team will need to be better to beat Wales and Australia in the weeks ahead.
It was a very English sort of performance, almost as if they wanted to live up to the stereotype held by the rest of the rugby world – lots of power, little flair, less imagination. Under pressure England retrenched, sought to bully Fiji at the scrum and lineout and ended up playing well within their limitations. Their solution to every problem seemed to be to add more power.
Well, they could not but be nervous, given the occasion and perhaps that explains the way they played. Even here at their home ground everything must have felt a little unfamiliar, from the long wait until the evening start, to the fact they were staying in the away dressing room and warmed up while hundreds of people were still clearing away the detritus of the opening ceremony, scaffolding, carpets, video screens.
England arrived at 6pm, their coach stopping short so the players could walk through thousands of fans, packed dozens deep. They have done this many times now but never had a reception quite like this.
Fiji, down at their training ground in Weybridge, had been training in front of a set of loudspeakers playing old audio recordings of Twickenham matches. Much good it must have done them. The crowd here has never sounded so loud and even England seemed a little taken aback by the intensity of the atmosphere. Chris Robshaw led them in, 22 faces set like stone, some players pale with nerves, until the last one, James Haskell, who was sporting a broad grin, filming everything on a camera attached to a little pole.
At last came the start – the final five seconds of the four years Stuart Lancaster has been building this team counted down by 80,000 – and then a false step. Fiji’s fly-half, Ben Volavola, sent his kick long and left. No one claimed it and it landed two feet in front of Ben Youngs, who stood still, startled for a split-second, unsure whether to grab hold. Then he did. And England were off.
Volavola, richly gifted but making only his third start for Fiji, spilled England’s return kick. A scrum a little inside Fiji’s half was just the tonic England needed for early nerves. Fiji’s team have some extraordinary talents but, for all the work done by their coach, John McKee, set-piece play is not one of them. Their lineout is particularly poor. England played merry hell with it.
When Fiji’s No6 Dominiko Waqaniburotu was caught lifting Jonny May’s legs in a tackle, Robshaw had George Ford kick the penalty to the corner. With a catch and a drive Fiji’s forwards scattered. The referee, Jaco Peyper, awarded a penalty try for an infringement by the scrum-half, Nikola Matawalu. He went to the sin-bin. This was 13 minutes in, making it the earliest try in the opening match of any Rugby World Cup.
Eight minutes later came another English try, this time off a Fijian throw, five metres out from their own line. The hooker Sunia Koto’s throw sailed over the top of his team-mates and straight to Tom Wood, who took the catch and went to ground. England swept it on down the line to set up a simple finish for Brown – England 15, Fiji 0. From there, it seemed, England were going to pull away but instead the match became scrappy, a real dogfight of a game.
McKee had picked out their scrummaging as the “critical factor”, saying that if they could only compete there they would be able to hold their own. There seemed small chance of that as one of that their two starting props plays for Nottingham in the Championship and the other has just signed for Bucharest. But McKee’s work paid off. Matawalu spat off the side of one scrum, stepped round May and sprinted half the length of the pitch towards the line. Replays showed he dropped the ball six inches above the grass, so it was disallowed. But, glory be, Fiji won the following five-metre scrum. Volavola lofted a kick to the far side where, this time around, Nemani Nadolo beat Anthony Watson in the air. He added a penalty soon after. For half an hour England were clinging uncomfortably on to that 10-point lead.
On to the final minutes and Brown, after his second try, was soon up and running again. He took the ball deep in his own half, made a 30-yard burst and broke through three exhausted Fijians. If nothing else, this England team have extraordinary reserves of heart and spirit. They will need every last bit of it from here on in.
