I’m in two minds about this latest England performance. Of course the team played incredibly poorly but does that make it less likely that they will win the Grand Slam? Ireland will think so and fancy their chances at the Aviva stadium in Dublin on Saturday, but I’m not so sure.
This wasn’t so much a wake-up call for England as a bucket of ice-cold water poured over the faces of a fast-asleep team.
England were that ordinary. But as preparation for Dublin, the disappointment the players will feel is no bad thing. We’ve been told that this is an honest team, one that it is prepared to call things as they are. If this is true, England’s players will know they let themselves down and they will travel to Dublin probably thinking as much about redeeming their reputation as winning a Grand Slam.
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That is not a bad starting point.
Before any consideration of what went wrong with England, it is only right to give credit where it is due. Scotland performed well and it would not have been undeserved if they’d got something from the game.
They played their best Test match of the campaign. Their young lock Richie Gray had another fine match and on this occasion he had plenty of support from those around them.
Half an hour before the game, a fox could be seen doing a little scavenging on the pitch at Twickenham and if the England players had been sharper, they would have taken this as a portent of what was to follow.
The Scots were, if they will pardon me for engaging in a little stereotyping, canny. They sensed that England weren’t quite where they needed to be in terms of their physicality and they committed plenty of men to the breakdowns. When it was England’s ball, it was slow. Scotland’s ball, on the other hand, was often quick and clean.
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Slow ball asked different questions of Ben Youngs and Toby Flood because when your forwards are not playing on the front foot, life is tougher for the half-backs. They didn’t play especially well and though you can part-blame the forwards for that, it is also true that Youngs and Flood didn’t adapt particularly well to a difficult situation.
I noticed Martin Johnson giving referee Romain Poite an earful as the players and officials walked off at half-time and it is likely the England manager was complaining about the Scots slowing down England’s ball. But if Martin’s own players had played with the right intensity, I don’t believe for a second they would have been messed up nearly as much as they were by the Scots.
Scotland have their reasons for feeling a little miffed with the referee because the sin-binning of John Barclay at a critical moment in the game was harsh. England’s only try, scored by Tom Croft, came in the minute before Barclay’s return from the bin and with Jonny Wilkinson’s excellent conversion, it gave England the seven points that made the difference.
What was really disappointing from an England viewpoint was the lack of intensity from the start and the lack of leadership when it was clear things were going wrong. I also got the sense that England might have spent too long on the training ground last week because how else do you explain why the team was so heavy-legged and lacking in energy?
Of course this can sometimes be the consequence of a poor mental approach to the game but I felt there was a physical aspect to the listlessness. For myself and countless other England fans, it was a sobering experience because it forces us to re-evaluate the team and probably come to the conclusion that they are not quite as good as they looked on that bright afternoon in the autumn when they were excellent against Australia.
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Now the team will know that if they played against Wales or France like they played in this match, they would have lost. Equally, this performance wouldn’t be near good enough to win in Dublin. But this is the reason that part of my response is to be secretly delighted - as it is now certain that England’s attitude will be spot on for Dublin.
There are other pluses. Before this game, England were big favourites with the bookies to beat Ireland but that will not now be the case.
Ireland might even start favourites and that won’t hurt England in the slightest. What we mustn’t forget is from where England have come. A year ago, they scraped a win against Italy, they drew with Scotland, they lost to Ireland and France: now they are playing for a Grand Slam.
How can that not be progress?
It should also be said that not every England player underperformed against the Scots and I was pleased that James Haskell was named man of the match because he had a decent game. With the team sinking well below the standards the players have set for themselves, Haskell remained above the mediocrity.
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If they do win in Dublin, this team wouldn’t go down as the great winners of the Grand Slam but that won’t matter one bit.