Beneath all the mud and muck, you can just about make out the faded “England 2015” branding the RFU put up around Twickenham for the last World Cup. No doubt they have tried to scrub it out, along with almost everything else that happened in that tournament, but the shadows of the letters are still there along either side of the pitch, a stubborn reminder of how quickly things can fall apart when the heavy pressure comes down. The next tournament is exactly 300 days away. England have come on this autumn, but they look a way short of being ready for the next one just yet.
England overwhelm careless Australia with Kyle Sinckler power game
They have the makings, though. You can see where Eddie Jones wants them to go. He has built what must be one of the biggest, roughest, toughest squads England have ever had. No one is going to beat them in a scrap. Certainly not Australia, who were not outplayed so much as overpowered.
The tone was set early on, when the Australia prop Scott Sio ran slap bang into Brad Shields and Sam Underhill and got buffeted back like a beachball in a stiff breeze. But after that the first half fell flat. Jones said it was similar to what happened against Japan, when they wasted the momentum they had made with an early try.
“We got seduced by the game, and thought it was going to come easy,” Jones explained. It did not. In fact, they were lucky to have so much as a share of the lead at half-time. Owen Farrell could easily have conceded a penalty try when he hit Izack Rodda with a tackle that looked a lot like a shoulder-charge. That is the second time this autumn that Farrell has got away with one of those. Sooner or later, he will come up against a referee who does not cut him so much slack, and it will cost him and the team. The Australians certainly made their feelings about it pretty clear to the English players and the referee, Jaco Peyper.
That might have been their mistake. Because this is not an England team you want to pick a fight with. Not when they are in this mood. Kyle Sinckler always plays like he is angry, but he laid waste to the Wallabies like they had just insulted his mother. When he picked a fight with Adam Coleman, the referee’s mic caught him shouting out: “You’re all fucking snitches anyway.” Sinckler, a human cannonball, has been one of the standout players of the autumn, and he capped it with a superb match here. He dominated the scrum, and was a wild tearaway in the loose, where he bust holes in the gainline every time he touched the ball.
Sinckler was man of the match. It might have been Joe Cokanasiga on the wing. Jones made a point of saying that Cokanasiga was “still in training pants”. He wants to make sure he keeps his feet on the ground, because this was the sort of performance people get carried away with. There was a moment when Dane Haylett-Petty tried to tackle him, front on, and it seemed like Cokanasiga did not even notice him trying to do it. Haylett-Petty hit him low, in the midriff, and the Bath player seemed just about as bothered by it as a brick wall might be by a rubber ball. He did not even flinch.
Haylett-Petty, wearing the same sort of bemused look people used to shoot at Jonah Lomu, was left kneeling on all fours while Cokanasiga sprinted away to score. He almost got another soon after when he caught the ball on the halfway line, slipped one tackler, stepped another, and outsprinted a third. This time Haylett-Petty did not even try to tackle him, but just threw himself in front of him as if he had decided he finally wanted to end it all. This speed bump slowed Cokanasiga just enough for Michael Hooper to arrive and tackle him from behind.
In among all this, of course, the usual suspects were at work. Maro Itoje was crashing around and Courtney Lawes smashing around. At times it did not look like a team of Englishmen, but a herd of them. After 70 minutes of this Australia were in bits. And then Jones was able to bring on Nathan Hughes and Manu Tuilagi, for his first cap since 2016.
“We played a real English way in the second half,” Jones said, with obvious relish, after it was all over, “with traditional English strengths: a strong scrum, a lineout maul, and a good defence.” Jones has always said that he wants to build a team that plays in what he says is an “English” style: strong, powerful and intimidating. He spoke about it in his very first press conference in 2016. Two years later, he has done that much. Their play was not all that pretty, witty or smart, but it worked against Australia. The question is whether it will be enough to beat everyone else next year.