Rugby Union - World Cup Warm up
4 August 2007, Kick off 4.00 pm
England V Wales - Venue Twickenham
Sky Sports 2, Commentators Miles Harrison and Stuart Barnes
A few weeks of summer rugby for England began here with the first warm up game in the run up to defending the World Cup in France. Since winning the World Championship in Sydney 4 years ago England's form has been pachy, most recently they got well beaten on a tour of South Africa and were also well beaten earlier this year by todays opponenets Wales.
Wales themselves followed up by a strong performance in a narrow defeat against Australia. For their part today was about strangth in depth, particularly in the forwards where they left out a number of first team regulars to see if other players could step up. England put out a much stronger team today to try and take advantage of this, and they certainly did.
England's pack won the ball from Johnny Wilkinson's short kick off from the start, this set the tone of English dominence up front. Early pressure however did not lead to points as Wilkinson uncharacteristically missed two early penalties. The pressure was eased however when Nick Easter went over for the first try from short range after the English forwards battered the Welsh into submission.
From there on it was a prosession of one way traffic. The forwards dominated and by half time had added two further tries, both of a very similar close range fashion, one from Steve Borthwick and the other, a second for Easter. Wilkinson added a further penalty to give England a 22-0 lead at half time.
The only question was would the backs cut loose after the half. This did not quite happen as a couple of overlaps were wasted by the backs. It was left the the pack to continue to pile on the pressure, Easter got a hat trick from close range again, Shaun Perry added two more and the biggest cheer of the day was reserved for the ever popular Laurence Dallaglio who balsted over from five meters out from a close range scrum.
A couple of substitutions by Wales made a degree of difference for around 10 minutes when they did get some ball and Dafydd James went over in the corner after a smart Welsh move. That would be all for the Welsh however, as in the last two minutes the backs finally put a couple of moves together, Jason Robinson went over to show he is still a big threat, and Matthew Tait finished the game off with an easy try under the posts from a long kick with no Welsh defender in sight. This gave England 60 points, a miserable day for Wales weakened team proving they have little strength in depth.
As for England, tougher will be to come, the pack wont have it this easy against South Africa in the World cup group game, the backs wont be able to squander chances like they did today then either, but they showed today they can compete, especially in the forwards with fine performances from Easter, Perry and Borthwick and Regan. don't right off the World Champions just yet.
RESULT
England 62 Wales 5
England - Tries (Easter 3, Borthwick, Perry 2, Dallaglio, Robinson, Tait) Conversions (Wilkinson 7) Pens (Wilkinson 3)
Wales - Tries (D James)
MOON OF LIBERTY STAR MAN - Shaun Perry (England) - His breaks began the rout, two tries and directed the whole game from scrum half, a super performance.
