Why ‘ugly’ English held their nerve
Lawrence Dallaglio takes a seat on a devastated French player and congratulates Martin Corry after England’s victory
THE ugly duckling turned into a swan at the Stade de France on Saturday. Well, perhaps not a swan but a thing of beauty to the thousands of England fans inside and outside the stadium. The Webb Ellis Cup will have to be surgically removed from the holders when they return to Paris on Saturday for their second successive World Cup final.
Fabien Pelous, France’s most-capped player, was absolutely right when he said last week that England do not have the best rugby players but they have the biggest belief system. The English Premiership has its critics where skill is concerned, not least from this direction, but this victory was born in the heart of the Premiership and has, at once, messages of hope and warning.
The first is in praise of the qualities of courage and endurance that make England’s domestic tournament what it is. The second requires the 12 Premiership clubs to avoid dilution of these essentially English ingredients by the introduction of too many overseas players; this is not to say that the foreign contingent lack heart or fortitude but, coming from outside, they may not necessarily have that soul-deep conviction of so many English sportsmen and women.
“You can have game plans galore but if you haven’t got the physicality, the courage, the guts in the first place, none of that stuff means anything,” Phil Vickery, the captain, said in his soft-spoken way before the game, not only to the media but in a moving five-minute speech to his squad.
So it was that a team universally condemned by outsiders to be also-rans made hot air of all the predictions by holding the host nation to a one-point advantage after a first half when France made all the running, and then throttling them out of the game.
Yet how small the differences between triumph and despair. No more than 12 minutes remained when Joe Worsley, the replacement for Lewis Moody whose damaged shoulder forced him off, brought off the ankle-tap that prevented Vincent Clerc scoring. France led 9-8 at that stage and there was little between the electric Toulouse wing and the line but Clerc stumbled and slowed, enough for the defence to recover and concede only a five-metre scrum.
The next minute determined the course of the game. England’s scrum forced the French to give ground, only a little but it was enough to induce uncertainty, Andy Gomarsall was round to harass and France conceded a penalty.
Nerve
It was a microcosm of everything England tried to do and it was enough to put France, nerve ends jangling, on the back foot and for Jonny Wilkinson to apply the coup de grace, as he did so memorably in the Sydney semi-final against them four years ago against Australia.
Wilkinson has been so important to this England team, not because of the quality of his game at the moment, which is distinctly mixed, but because of who he is and what he has done. He, too, is a microcosm: a player who has overcome the worst that life could throw at a professional sportsman by way of injuries, has broadened as an individual as a result and brings now a serenity that, in his other life pre-2003, he did not achieve.
The irony here is that his opposite number, Lionel Beauxis, was the man with the 100pc goalkicking record on the night, three penalty goals out of three compared with Wilkinson’s 66pc return, but at the same time his game was falling apart.
Beauxis kicked too long out of hand, he could not live with the stranglehold exerted by Moody and he was part of a France team that fell into a tactical vacuum.
They were sucked into it by the domination they exerted over the first half-hour, despite the try that England scored within 90 seconds.
Gomarsall kicked high from halfway and Damien Traille, the centre forced to become a manufactured full-back, suffered a fatal hesitation in his right-hand corner: he waited for the ball to bounce, it flew back off its point into the eager arms of Josh Lewsey and the wing, later forced off with a damaged hamstring, crashed through Traille’s arms over the line.
But then France found themselves in a game they had not necessarily planned for, not after living on short commons against New Zealand. They dominated possession and territory but were uncertain whether to stay with their kicking game or whether to run; in the end they did neither effectively. They lost Pelous with damaged ribs mid-way through the half, which required Sebastien Chabal to work far longer in a tight role than as an impact replacement in a game loosening up.
“When they brought Freddie Michalak on, I thought that was good for us because he wasn’t going to change the game as much as our replacements would,” Brian Ashton, England’s head coach, said.
At that stage Beauxis and Wilkinson had exchanged further penalties and England had noted the potential cost of running ball and then being turned over, France gaining prime attacking positions by chasing kicks hacked downfield.
But always there was a defender to hand; it might have been Paul Sackey under a high ball, Dan Hipkiss covering back or Mathew Tait keeping an eye on the little grub-kicks with which Michalak seemed fascinated. So England ground their way back, with the patience that neither France, nor Australia nor New Zealand possess, and left it to Wilkinson to work his magic.
Missed
He had already missed the touchline conversion of Lewsey’s try, a 54-metre penalty attempt and a couple of dropped goals, one of which bounced back off an upright, but France still knew what was coming their way.
A swinging arm by Dimitri Szarzewski on Jason Robinson, who had earlier given warning of intent with a glorious counter-attacking run from halfway, conceded the penalty that gave England the lead; then came the swelling crescendo of forward play that gave Wilkinson his 40-metre dropped goal.
The signs in the Twickenham dressing-room last season read STW — shock the world, a quote taken by Ashton from Muhammad Ali before the boxer’s first bout with Sonny Liston. England have done that already, and still it is not enough for them. (© The Times, London
