The Joe Show was a smash hit and he has to start in World Cup
EVERYONE loves a player who gets them on their feet and Joe Cokanasiga looks like one of those players. He is 6ft 4in, 18-and-a-half stone, quick, athletic and has some unreal offloading skills. He is only 21 years of age but, for me, if England were playing a World Cup quarter-final next week he would start.
If I was an opposing coach, I would want to see Cokanasiga on the bench, and England can fix any deficiencies in his game by the autumn.
The wing is one of those X-factor players and some people will point to what he can’t do, maybe defensively. But look at what he can do.
Jason Robinson was similar when I brought him into the squad in 2001. I had him on the bench for the first three games.
But I would be sitting in the coaching area and the crowd would be screaming at me to get Jason on. Cokanasiga is a similar case.
Yesterday was only his fourth cap and he never missed a beat — right from his catch and one-handed reverse pass to Tom Curry in the opening minutes.
I am sure Eddie Jones asked him to just play his normal game and his normal game is pretty extraordinary. No wonder Eddie was so keen to get this guy into the team.
England got him in the game early and it is no surprise, given his heritage, that he reminded me of one of those great Fijian Sevens players. He was a fantastic sight, he has said that Jonah Lomu was his hero and he has got all the attributes to play like Jonah.
When you have got players like that in your side, it gets the whole crowd on their feet and the stadium was buzzing when Cokanasiga got the ball.
England did their bit with eight tries and Cokansiga was at the heart of it.
England have got some serious options on the wing, with Jack Nowell and Chris Ashton about and Anthony Watson to come back. So it is not who England pick, it is how they play.
Manu Tuilagi looked like his old self but the jury is still out on the Tuilagi/Ben Te’o combination in midfield and I would prefer Henry Slade in there.
But Bath winger Cokanasiga was the star of the show — even if he didn’t get on the scoresheet.
England played at pace. They might have looked a bit frenetic at the start but they had three tries in 20 minutes and a bonus point after 32 minutes.
They looked like they were challenging themselves and this was an important work-out as England now have only one meaningful game, Scotland next week, before the World Cup.
I would have got George Ford and Dan Robson on at half back at half-time but they only got 18 minutes. I would also have kept the front row and Tom Curry on the pitch for the full 80 minutes.
There were times when it all got a bit flat in the second half and multiple replacements contributed to that.
I loved the huddle that captain Owen Farrell called on the pitch at half-time — he looked pretty animated.
When you are 31-7 up and the game is in the bag, it is easy to lose focus.
Hopefully the message to his players was that they were starting from scratch again and they got four more tries after the break.
A tip of the hat to Wales, who are now chasing a Grand Slam after a difficult week and pulled off a win at Murrayfield.
It was a great defensive effort in the second half when they had virtually no ball and they were brilliantly led by Alun Wyn Jones and Jonathan Davies, two of my favourite players.
I felt for Warren Gatland, who is trying to win a World Cup. For the Welsh Rugby Union to announce regional merger plans this week was just unbelievable.
Playing away in the Six Nations is tough enough without outside distractions but Wales got the job done.