The real England must turn up for Wales test

NOW the dust has settled on Friday night what do we make of England’s game against Fiji and how does it impact with their huge match against Wales on Saturday?

The bottom line is that it was a bonus-point win against awkward opponents, achieved by a team not remotely playing to their potential.

World Cups aren’t really about performance. They are about winning and getting the result you need by hook or by crook and in that respect it was job done with Billy Vunipola’s 82-minute try the icing on the cake.

You are not going to produce five-star performances every time and nor should a World Cup team waste a single second fretting about a game that has gone. The Fiji match is now history as far as England are concerned, just focus now on the areas of the game that clearly need to improve before Wales.

And they shouldn’t be expecting Fiji to do them any favours with an upset win against Australia, either. Fiji were decent in the tight but disappointed me greatly elsewhere and really did not live up to all the pre-match hype, simply they were never going to better England.

This next week is now the ideal scenario for Stuart Lancaster. The coaches can get stuck in a bit, be very critical and really wind things up which is a lot easier after a win.

The scrum needs some serious attention. Not only did England lose three of their own put-ins but they failed to dominate and create the platform in the others.

I suspect we have underestimated the value of the banned Dylan Hartley’s scrummaging while Joe Marler is not that long back from surgery and although fit might not be quite as match hardened.

Or it could be the collective isn’t working. Graham Rowntree is second to none as a scrum coach and he needs to get to the bottom of it before the Wales game, where scrummages will be a bigger issue.

Mentally, I also wonder where England are sometimes. I heard Billy Vunipola saying after the game that he had no idea there were bonus points in the World Cup and therefore wasn’t aware of the importance of his final try. Early days still, but we are up and running and I fully expect the real England to turn up this Saturday.