England eventually subdued Conor O'Shea's cleverly prepared and spirited Italian side to return to the top of the RBS Six Nations table with a 36-15 win at Twickenham yesterday. However, it took England almost 70 minutes to secure their anticipated bonus point, with their fourth try by replacement Jack Nowell, and their winning margin has left the title door a little further ajar for Ireland.
Italy, the 42 point and 20-1 underdogs, even had the temerity to lead 10-5 at the interval, despite two glaring penalty misses by recalled out-half Tommaso Allan. This had not followed Eddie Jones preordained script when declaring that "we want to take them to the cleaners".
Italy’s tactics of standing off at rucks, thereby taking away the offside line and flooding around on the English side of the ball instead prompted Jones to bemoan: “Congratulations to Italy, but it’s not rugby.”
The win took England to 13 points at the top of the Six Nations table, three ahead of Ireland and four ahead of Scotland, whom England host in the penultimate round of matches on Saturday week. The Scots will arrive encouraged by their opportunist 29-13 win over Wales on Saturday and not only still in the championship picture, but seeking a Triple Crown.
The night before, Ireland go into their first Friday night fixture at the Principality Stadium, with the healthiest points’ difference of +58, compared to England’s +29.
Hence, were Ireland to beat Wales, another win of any description over England – unless they beat Scotland with a bonus point – in the tournament’s finale on March 18th at the Aviva Stadium would suffice to secure the title given Ireland’s superior points difference.
Injuries
While the extent of Rob Kearney’s abductor injury has still to be ascertained, and allowing for Josh van der Flier’s absence, otherwise Ireland appear to have a clean bill of health.
Jared Payne marked his return to action yesterday when playing almost the last 20 minutes of Ulster's bonus point win away to Zebre. "There are another few guys who are potentially going to play for their provinces next week and put their hands up as well," said Joe Schmidt on Saturday night. "I think Jared is probably one of them."
However, even if Payne were to complete 80 minutes when Ulster host Treviso next Friday night, it would be surprising were he to dislodge the increasingly impressive Garry Ringrose, and even more surprising if others forced their way now into a fairly settled team and squad.
Schmidt intimated as much, and in theory, with the momentum from two wins, Ireland look to be in a good place.
“Theory is great,” said Schmidt after Saturday’s win, “and expectation is great. In theory you want to be able to work your way through with that group, and that group gets more time to gel and more time to be cohesive. So in theory you hope that that is the case.”
“Wales will put on a different sort of pressure than France did. They have got very big backs, they are very fast and strong as well, so they bring a slightly different equation. So while you might be making progress in one facet of the game, other facets of the game then get tested by different opponents.”
The return of a healthy Johnny Sexton in tandem with Conor Murray gave Ireland a critical advantage at half-back. "He operated really well today," Schmidt said of Sexton. "The experience he has with the group, and the way they have confidence in him, is because he has navigated them so effectively for however long. I wouldn't say it was easy; he worked really hard to make sure he was comfortable and knew what to anticipate from the French."
Murray’s influence
Regarding Murray’s increasing influence, Schmidt said: “Conor is really quiet. He does not impose his personality or doesn’t really say a lot in the group, but he is incredibly respected within the group. We want players’ actions to have such a volume that we don’t need to hear them speaking. And he turns up the volume for the big games without a doubt.
“He has got a skill set that enables us to play, to change the point of attack and to relieve pressure, and he has got a courage to allow us have an extra defender, sliding into the defensive line as required, and even when the ball is in the air, he is good in the air. It is a luxury having a scrum half who is 6ft 2in.
"We wouldn't rely on one particular talisman because you start to revolve too much around one person and that is too much pressure for the person. But one of the great things when you have Robbie Henshaw playing as well as he is, when you have Garry Ringrose continuing to get better as he has, and he really demonstrated that tonight against Gael Fickou, who is a big young man, and Remi Lamerat – we have seen a lot of how powerful he is. Garry fronted up really well. Keith Earls, as well, was excellent. And Simon Zebo, getting back and covering that ground. So you want to be able to rely on everybody."
In this, Schmidt highlighted the backrow’s workrate, and the Irish lineout, but added: “It was a really frustrating night for the front row because our scrum has been so good against the best teams in the world and this is a [French] team that we know are problematic at scrum time. It is a source of huge frustration for us that we didn’t get the platform that we were looking for there.”
One of the few sources of frustration from a satisfying day at the office.
And then there were three.
