It wasn’t pretty. In fact, it was downright ugly at times, but England got the job done and can be extremely satisfied with an away win in Ireland in filthy conditions. After all, it had been 10 years since they had last come away from Emerald Isle with a win in their pocket.
I have to admit I misread this one – and that is more credit going England’s way. I though that with Ireland’s superior experience in key positions they would edge a close encounter. At least I get the close encounter bit right, but Owen Farrell, Alex Goode and Mike Brown in particular played like men with 50 caps and several campaigns behind them.
Right from the opening moments when he gathered Jonny Sexton’s kick, captain Chris Robshaw seemed to be everywhere for England, taking high balls, making tackles and breaking up Irish attacks all afternoon and was a fully deserved man of the match.
It was a scrappy, niggly encounter. Cian Healy can expect a visit to the citing commissioner for his stamp, Farrell might have seen yellow on another day for tackling off the ball after an early kick went awry and James Haskell was rightly sin-binned for kicking the ball away as he moved away from a ruck. His protestations fooled a lot of onlookers but not the man who mattered.
In conditions that made a passing game virtually impossible, it was always likely to come down to a battle of the kickers. Farrell and Sexton were relatively evenly matched but a huge miss from Ronan O’Gara late on left Ireland with too much to do. Even Farrell missed two kicks today but in some respects, England won this game through making less errors when it really mattered.
During Haskell’s 10 minutes off the pitch, England scored the decisive pair of penalties that put them six points ahead. While the extra man gives a theoretical advantage, often it works against teams as they try to force play too much, which can result in indiscipline or errors, particularly as the team down to 14 men will be doing their utmost to slow things down. It wasn’t quite the 13-man resistance against New Zealand in 2003, but it was a fair effort from Robshaw’s men.
At the start of the second half, Ireland got on top of England at the scrum but Stuart Lancaster and his coaching team showed that they weren’t going to wait for things to get out of hand. Early in the second half, on came Courtney Lawes and Manu Tuilagi, shortly followed by Dylan Hartley. The changes shored things up and Lawes’ put-the-team-first-body-later tackle on Rob Kearney (after brilliant work from Brown) got England their third scoring penalty.
Tuilagi gave the Irish defence something else to think about and on a couple of occasions might have pinched a try, first fumbling the ball after a rare error from Brian O’Driscoll and then just over-running a smart through kick from Ben Youngs.
For Ireland, Keith Earls made an impact when he came on with some smart running and Sean O’Brien had a strong second half. The early departures of Sexton and Simon Zebo were huge blows, limiting their options to change things as the match went on.
This was a game similar to Scotland-Italy yesterday where the team making most of the running, more share of possession and most of the territory ended up on the losing side. To win big games in any sport, you have to win the big moments. That is exactly what England did today.
