SIR CLIVE SLATES ‘AMATEUR’ ENGLAND:

It PAINS me to say it, but England l ooked l i ke a team of amateurs playing against streetwise professionals in the last 20 minutes at twickenham. From being well in control at 22-12 up after 52 minutes with a good, solid and efficient performance, it went horribly wrong as England shot themselves in the foot. Rugby at this level starts with 20 minutes to go — the last 20 minutes on Saturday should be a salient lesson for English rugby that you need to make tough decisions on and off the pitch if you really want to dominate the top table of the international game.

First, they stopped playing and stopped looking for the try that would probably have closed the game out. then they lost all momentum with their changes off the bench — changes which led directly to a Wales try — and then there was the confusion at the end over whether to go for a line-out or a penalty shot to draw the game.

I wouldn’t wish to take anything away from Wales. they were brave and outplayed England when it counted.

the i rony here i s that Stuart Lancaster’s big call in the week — Owen Farrell and Sam Burgess in — actually worked. I would have picked George Ford and Henry Slade but, as a coach, I fully understood the rationale behind the decisions.

Farrell was outstanding and Burgess solid. He was scorched once by Scott Williams on the outside but Williams has done that to plenty of class centres. Generally, England’s midfield were doing the job asked of them and if England hadn’t conceded a succession of silly penalties — all correctly awarded by Jerome Garces — the game was theirs.

But then came the replacements. there were a couple of injuries — Ben Youngs and Billy Vunipola — but the others were not necessary and the late introduction of Ford made no sense at all. England were all at sea defensively with Ford at 10, Farrell at 12 and Brad Barritt defending the 13 channel.

But rather than take advantage, the substitutions evened the odds. From looking secure most of the night, England were lost and Wales’ decisive try was down to that. First, Farrell sprang out of the line and gave Wales a sniff and then Barritt couldn’t resist and got left for dead.

Yet again in the last 15-20 minutes, England didn’t have the 15 players on the park you would want when the pressure is ramped up. the front row had been going well. the defensive structure of the backs was OK. Why change it by bringing on Ford? the England XV who finished the game was: Brown; Watson, Barrit t , Farrel l , May; Ford, Wigglesworth; M Vunipola, Webber, Brookes; Launchbury, Parling; Wood, Robshaw, Haskell. Could you imagine this XV starting for England in a game of this importance? No, so why finish with it?

BLAME THE COACHES

ENGLANd’S decision to kick for the corner rather than ask Farrell to shoot at goal to draw the match was the wrong call but i t wasn’t Chris Robshaw’s fault. that one is down to the management.

It should have been discussed and coached at t he very start of Lancaster’s r egime. ‘ What if ’ coaching sessions might not be among the most glamorous, but like any aspects of international rugby, if you get these basics right the results will follow. decision-making is done through coaching and is just as important, if not more important, than any other aspect.

In the calm light of day you sit down and discuss likely scenarios. It might be how to play with 14 men, or what tactics to adopt if the game descends to uncontested scrums. It would include every conceivable ‘ what if ’ you might face either defending or chasing a narrow lead in the final two minutes of a World Cup pool game.

It i s not possible, surely, that England have not sat down and asked themselves what the call is if they are faced with a very l ate penalty to draw as opposed to win. Ever since the draw was made in 2012 this was on the cards against Wales and Australia. there is every chance of it happening again on Saturday.

So you kick it around in your team room on a quiet Monday afternoon when everybody is recovering from their club games the previous day. And then the coach and team decide the policy so that you make the correct, logical call when you can’t hear yourself think in front of 80,000 fans, your brain is scrambling and the pressure is really on.

For England to say it was the captain’s call, and for Robshaw to accept the blame, is not right. It was a collective error that may haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Awareness and decision-making at the death has been an issue before but England got away with it. In the first warm-up against France, standin skipper tom Wood opted to kick into the corner thinking they were four points up and needed a try to seal the game when in fact they were five up and just needed the simple pot at goal.

then, after the Fiji game, Vunipola — who plays i n the try- scoring position of No 8 — tells us he didn’t know that the bonus-points system was operating in the World Cup.

Here England have been burnt for not excelling in this important area. Simply put, it separates the good teams from the world-class ones.

HATS OFF TO GATLAND

It would be remiss not to note another outstanding coup f or Warren Gatland and his coaching team. He let England do most of the talking in the lead-up and from seemingly being in the box seat last Monday, they increasingly came under pressure.

Gatland was calm afterwards and you could see he was already thinking about Fiji. Congratulations once again. A successful siege of twickenham.