BRILLIANT ENGLAND BLITZ THE ALL BLACKS
IAM in awe of the entire England team and those who coached and prepared them after that performance. I’ve been sticking my head above the parapet and confidently predicting an England win all week, but what surprised even me was the 80-minute excellence of that display.
I can’t imagine England have ever played better on the biggest stage. I felt a huge surge of pride watching this team and admiration for how clever and skilled they were.
Eddie Jones has got this group ticking over beautifully. What a magnificent job he has done, though I was glad to see him in business-like mode and already thinking about the final. He knows England must go to the well once more.
England played with great tempo. They were massively powerful, disciplined, clever, indomitable, unmoveable — everything as a fan you’d want them to be. And more.
There was a beautiful variety to their game that New Zealand couldn’t cope with. England absolutely battered the All Blacks, the winning margin could, perhaps should, have been much greater.
For me, two players stood out, skipper Owen Farrell and Maro Itoje, their talisman lock.
Farrell is why I have always believed England can take this World Cup. He is a winner, it’s in his DNA, he’s spent his career collecting silverware with Saracens. He knows how to deliver on the day.
He copped a nasty dead leg in the first half but the thought of coming off will never have entered his mind.
Farrell had started – brilliantly – and he would bloody well finish! This was his time and he would not be denied. That kind of diehard attitude is infectious. England took their cue from him. Now his team must wait to see how long that leg takes to recover.
And then we had the remarkable Itoje. For me he has been biding his time in this tournament. He knew the mighty summits that needed to be climbed towards the end and didn’t waste too much energy in the foothills.
Perfectly efficient and effective in the pool games, he has won enough trophies with Sarries to know it’s a different ball game in the knock-out stages. Against Australia he was excellent, yesterday he was off the scale against two of the world’s great locks in Brodie Retallick and Sam Whitelock.
New Zealand had stacked their lineout – the inclusion of Scott Barrett meant they had four front-line jumpers – so it was more important than ever that the England lineout, which consisted of Itoje and Courtney Lawes, functioned flawlessly, save for that miscommunication with Jamie George which led to the New Zealand try.
But there was so much more from Itoje. Huge physicality, invaluable steals on the floor, immovable at the ruck, marauding legally through various mauls, a thorough 24carat nuisance from start to finish. Super Maro, indeed. He showed in that second Lions
Test against New Zealand in 2017 how good he can be. This was in another league.
And he was totally disciplined, the only Achilles heel I’ve ever sensed in him. England in the last two months or so have become the best and fairest tacklers in the world.
They have taken the high hit to the torso and chest completely out of their repertoire because it is too risky in terms of conceding penalties and cards. Instead, scores of crunching tackles and double tackles around the legs, thighs and midriff come raining in. More than any other team at the World Cup they have recognised the reality of the change of law and zero tolerance of hits anywhere near the head.
And it doesn’t detract in any way from the game. You could not have had a more ferocious contest than the one we witnessed. Rugby can’t go backwards after this, the world can see fair tackling is possible.
Itoje epitomised all this and is probably the first name on the teamsheet alongside Farrell in your World XV. They were England’s totemic players but everybody in their own way responded and excelled. Every single player had a blinder.
The front row were immense and disciplined but more than anything left New Zealand chasing shadows with clever handling and lay-backs.
This used to be the domain of southern hemisphere teams, the sublime ball-handling front five forwards who we wondered if we could ever emulate. England now set the pace in this department.
Kamikaze kids Tom Curry and Sam Underhill once more covered themselves in glory, again their thunderclap tackling is textbook. It makes you wonder why and how the game ever went down the route of going in so much higher.
The emergence of this duo has given England a different dimension. When the game goes ‘wide wide’ as the coaches now say, England have two opensides tracking play and first to the breakdown. They get great assistance from Itoje and Lawes, another rangy athletic lock. England can truly play an all-court game.
Among the backs everyone put his hand up. Ben Youngs never let the tempo quieten and George Ford took on the extra kicking responsibilities – at goal and out of hand – when Farrell took his knock.
Out wide, Elliot Daly and Anthony Watson enjoyed their best England games in a long while and Manu Tuilagi was a huge figure in their wolfpack style defence.
Everybody concerned with the English game should savour this win but the job isn’t finished. Jones has been involved in two World Cup finals before – as Australia coach in 2003 and as an assistant with South Africa four years later – so he knows the pitfalls.
He will have England cooking by Saturday and if they repeat this display it would require a remarkable effort from their opponents to deny them.