Rugby Six Nations Championship: England 36 Italy 11:IT SAYS everything about how far England have slipped that some people regarded Saturday's result as progress. If this qualified as a step forward it was only in the sense of inching closer to the firing squad which surely awaits in Cardiff this weekend.
“Acid test” is Martin Johnson’s terse prediction, and he is not wrong. His best hope is that Wales watch a DVD of this game and conclude they are already home and dry.
Assuming ice shards have also stopped falling on motorists and the Severn Bridge is fully operational, England will certainly get a more accurate impression of their current place in the European pecking order.
Back in the 1970s it was a fact of life that English teams never had a prayer in Cardiff and those dark days, along with the three-day week and rising unemployment, seem to have returned.
Forget the five tries registered against the hapless Italians, for lengthy periods this was one of the poorest games of international rugby union you could imagine.
Italy, in particular, were so bad in the first half it was almost laughable, if not for those who had stumped up €85 for their seat. If Mauro Bergamasco lives to be 100 he will never forget the humiliation of his first – and last – outing as a Test scrumhalf.
Alas, poor Mauro.
Never has a great player had his reputation shredded so swiftly, nor allowed so many mediocre club scrumhalves to walk a little bit taller.
When Nick Mallett asked his star flanker to switch to number nine, the rest of us naively assumed the master coach knew something we didn’t.
In this instance, clearly not. Until the day Monty Panesar opens the batting – which may not be far away, to judge from events in the Caribbean – it will easily qualify as the year’s most disastrous sporting hunch.
A penitent Mallett had little option but to hold his hands up, openly conceding his side had “gift-wrapped” England their first three tries and confessing he should have abandoned the doomed experiment after a mere 25 minutes.
“I think I’ve learned my lesson,” sighed Mallett, promising Bergamasco his old shirt back against Ireland in Rome next Sunday with the more experienced Paul Griffen playing at scrumhalf.
Mallett added: “There’s no doubt that if we’d had a more experienced number nine we would not have conceded two of those tries. The second half was a better contest because we didn’t make so many stupid mistakes.”
Given the circumstances, the former Springbok coach could hardly discuss his hosts’ shortcomings – “I’ve got enough problems of my own without having to worry about England” – but two sinbinnings and a soaring penalty count betrayed a team still worryingly short of cohesion.
New Zealand would have taken one look at this lumpen meatball of an Italian side and devoured it whole, probably to the tune of 70 points.
England, in contrast, are still playing in ones and twos, failing to blast their way consistently over the gainline and attacking at a snail’s pace. When footage of the Ireland-France game in Dublin on Saturday evening flashed up it was like watching a different sport entirely.
There were exceptions. Harry Ellis nipped in for two sharp tries, James Haskell and Nick Kennedy were the pick of the forwards and Phil Vickery, Mark Cueto and Riki Flutey also made useful contributions. But the sight of the gifted replacement Ben Foden box-kicking the first three balls of his Test career into the stratosphere with his side 29-6 ahead was indicative of collective apprehension.
Nerves were advanced as one possible explanation, with the attack coach, Brian Smith, suggesting “the boys were a little bit spooked by the noise”.
If so, how on earth will they react in the seething dragon’s cauldron of the Millennium Stadium?
“Next week will be another step up,” acknowledged Johnson. “They’ve got a very good team and their crowd will be right behind them. It’s going to be a tough game.”
The first priority will be to keep 15 men on the field after six sinbinnings in two games. Johnson described Haskell’s trip on Gonzalo Canale as “silly”, and blamed an ill-judged aerial challenge by Shane Geraghty on over-eagerness, but will not be brushing the issue under the Pennyhill Park shag-pile.
“If you only have 14 men in big games it’s going to really hurt you. We hammer that home all the time,” added the England manager.
He is also still trying to stop players going off-script in the heat of battle and reverting to their club habits. This is clearly an England team with a long, pot-holed road ahead of it.
In the short term, furthermore, Johnson must think again at outhalf.
Andy Goode may have become the first number 10 in Twickenham history to catch the first lineout, score the first try and land the conversion, but he remains a stop-gap inclusion.
Toby Flood should be fit for consideration, but the cancellation of the Saxons game against Ireland A in Dublin last Friday looks set to extend Danny Cipriani’s period in limbo.
Johnson, though, badly needs to conjure a spark from somewhere if England are to avoid a serious Welsh roasting.
ENGLAND: D Armitage; Sackey, Noon (Tait, 74), R Flutey (Geraghty, 60), Cueto; Goode, Ellis (Foden, 60); Sheridan (White, 60), Mears (Hartley, 55), Vickery, Borthwick (capt), Kennedy (Croft, 74), Haskell, S Armitage (Worsley, 62), Easter. Sinbin: Haskell 37, Geraghty 63.
ITALY: Masi; Robertson, Canale, Garcia (Pratichetti, 55), Mirco Bergamasco; Marcato (McLean, 29), Mauro Bergamasco (Toniolatti, h/t); Perugini (Nieto, 60), Ongaro (Festuccia, 55), Castrogiovanni (Perugini, 55), Dellape (Montauriol, 76), Bortolami (Reato, 55), Sole, Zanni, Parisse (capt).
Referee: M Lawrence (South Africa).
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