Rugby World Cup warm-up: France 22 England 9

I missed this match as I was travelling when it was on.  I did, however, see a full re-run of the game later and I was pleasantly surprised.  Why?  I hear you ask.

Well, in between the final whistle of the contest in Marseille and myself training my beady eyes on the Sky repeat, I did catch a few news bulletins that were all overwhelmingly negative. So I was fearing the worst, but frankly I don't think that is what I saw. Don't get me wrong, I don't think England were good, and the second half was pretty awful, but the first 40 minutes offered much to be cheerful about I think.

Brian Ashton will today sit down and try to figure out how he can take the England performance in the first 15 minutes and somehow make it last for the full 80.  Easier said than done when team can unravel as quickly as England do at the moment.  But the ball was coming out quicker than it has lately, the backs looked capable of a modicum more creativity, and bar some unusual poor kicking by Wilkinson, they could have gone in at the interval in front.

But in the face of a brutal French eight in the second period they resorted to one-up rugby; playing within even the limited repertoire they possess at present and looked severely lacking. 

Credit to France, they upped their intensity and power to which England either did not respond or, more worryingly, could not respond quickly enough as the blue surge gathered momentum.  The hosts scored a try when a lovely scissor between Michalak and Jauzion allowed the centre to stretch and score under tackles from Perry and Farrell. They should have had another, instead Imanol Haranodoquy tried and failed to Billy Big Bollocks through Mark Cueto to score himself, rather than simply pass to the free man outside.  I don't buy some of the analysis presented suggesting that France were simply biding their time until the second half, I think they simply got a rocket put up them by Laporte and crucially used their powerful bench to great effect.

Yoda, forever the pragmatist, was keen to stress after the game that he knew exactly where it went wrong (that bloody kit for a start!) and he would set about putting it right, but three weeks is not a great deal of time. They should be thankful that their first RWC game is vs the USA.

England are not going to win this tournament, as any sane person knows, but France showed tonight that they may be a good bet on home soil.

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