England 17 France 9:BY WAY of a refreshing change to their routine this week, England's players are relocating en masse to Oxford, to relax beneath the dreaming spires. After three Six Nations wins, they are two steps away from the heavenly rose-tinted vision of a first grand slam since 2003, although there is more chance of Martin Johnson rowing in the Boat Race than him publicly reflecting on that possibility.
Outsiders will cheerfully speculate for him, but if any of Johnson’s squad wish to feature against Scotland and Ireland there are two little words, beginning with “g” and “s”, that they should avoid.
“No one’s mentioned a word about it in my presence,” said Johnson, reiterating his life-long belief that teams who get ahead of themselves invariably stumble. “It’s crazy. If you want to win anything, you concentrate on how. You don’t think, ‘Oh, that would be nice’.”
The beguiling scent of complacency will repulse Johnson as long as he has breath in his body.
England have now cleared a significant hump, not least in terms of self-belief. This was only their second victory on the middle weekend of the championship in their past eight attempts and it was a pivotal result secured by defensive steel rather than flashing blades. When Tom Wood, James Haskell, Tom Palmer, Louis Deacon and Alex Corbisiero are central to a major win over Les Bleus, it suggests a collective strength of character which can propel their team all the way.
Champions are only as strong as their weakest links and England – with two tries conceded in three games – have few of those.
Whether it elevates them to the status of World Cup contenders is a different matter – a cold, damp Saturday night in southwest London did little to encourage attacking fluency.
England, even so, are getting harder and harder to beat. The French have not scored a try against them for two years.
As the pressure intensified in the second half, too many Frenchmen shrank. There must be better wingers in the Top 14 than Yoann Huget, and the centres, Aurielien Rougerie and Yannick Jauzion, both fine players, do not complement each other. Clement Poitrenaud and Sebastien Chabal looked shadows of their selves; only William Servat and Imanol Harinordoquy raged throughout.
England seized the initiative at the start of the second half and never let it go, Ben Foden’s 42nd-minute try in the left corner rewarding Tom Palmer’s game-turning chargedown of Dimitri Yachvili’s attempted clearance.
If Rougerie had gathered Francois Trinh-Duc’s chip just before the hour it might have made a difference, but England had two tries disallowed (rightly) and Jonny Wilkinson’s supremely judged penalty deserved to secure victory as well as reclaim the world points-scoring record from Dan Carter.
“We could have been put away or ground down but I thought the forwards worked bloody well all the way through,” said Johnson.
“When we made our errors, generally we didn’t compound them. They didn’t turn into decisive moments which killed us.”
Instead it was the French who rubbed Irish referee George Clancy the wrong way at scrum-time – “I don’t want to say it was a home-town referee but it was almost like that,” said Yachvili – while Corbisiero did a splendid job of plugging the gap left by Andrew Sheridan’s premature departure with a calf injury.
ENGLAND: Foden; Ashton (both Northampton), Tindall (Gloucester, capt), Hape (Bath; Banahan, Bath, 76), Cueto (Sale); Flood (Leicester; Wilkinson, Toulon, 51), Youngs (Leicester; Care, Harlequins, 65); Sheridan (Sale; Corbisiero, London Irish, 23), Hartley (Northampton; Thompson, Leeds, 67), Cole (Leicester; Fourie, Leeds, 76), Deacon (Leicester; Shaw, Wasps, 71), Palmer (Stade Francais), Wood (Northampton), Haskell (Stade Francais), Easter (Harlequins).
FRANCE: Poitrenaud (Toulouse); Huget (Bayonne), Rougerie (Clermont Auvergne), Jauzion, Clerc (both Toulouse); Trinh-Duc (Montpellier; Palisson, Brive, 67), Yachvili (Biarritz; Parra, Clermont, 62); Domingo (Clermont; Marconnet, Biarritz, 60), Servat (Toulouse; Guirado, Perpignan, 76), Mas (Perpignan), Pierre (Clermont), Nallet (Racing Metro), Dusautoir (Toulouse, capt), Harinordoquy (Biarritz), Chabal (Racing; Bonnaire, Clermont, 51).
Referee: G Clancy (Ireland).