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Sport
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28 February 2016
Six nations: Sloppy England manage to see off Irish challenge
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England 21-10 Ireland
by David Nicholson
at Twickenham
THE Six Nations is now set up for a lip-smacking championship deciding clash between the two remaining undefeated sides, England and Wales, after Ireland were dispatched at the weekend.
Talk of an English Grand Slam is premature though as the home side showed familiar problems with discipline and sloppy handling errors, having two players sin-binned and being lucky not to have had Mike Brown join James Haskell and Danny Care off the pitch.
Coach Eddie Jones, fresh from his distasteful pre-match mind-game comments about Ireland’s fly-half Jonny Sexton’s risk of head injury, was keeping tight-lipped about a potential Grand Slam.
“Grand Slam, what’s that?” the wily Australian quipped after acclaiming his side’s first victory at Twickenham.
Jones said he was imposing a media blackout on himself until the eve of the game on March 12.
England had all the possession in the first half, with deserved man of the-match Billy Vunipola powering through Irish tackles and clocking up more metres in the first half than the entire Irish pack.
But for all England’s first half possession and the stout defence of the men in green, the home side made handling errors or ill-discipline lost the move. All Blacks coach Steve Hansen was in the crowd and won’t be overly bothered by what he saw.
Owen Farrell was by far the worst offender during the opening 40 minutes. As early as the eighth minute his dangerous play lost England an attacking line out and let Ireland move forward instead.
A half-time score of 6-3 flattered Ireland but was their reward for frenetic defending and English errors.
The inevitable happened within five minutes of the restart as Ireland’s Conor Murray scored the first try of the match within seconds of James Haskell being shown a yellow card for a late and high tackle.
England refused to panic and their best move saw Ireland stretched to one wing and then back to the other as Anthony Watson was put over for a lovely try. In a similar flowing move Mike Brown was able to run in unopposed in the corner to stretch the lead to 11 points.
Yet more ill discipline saw replacement scrum-half Danny Care yellow-carded with 10 minutes to go. Brown was lucky to stay on in the same incident as referee Romain Poite asked the TMO to look at the three kicks the full-back aimed at the ball in the ruck.
But England had many more positives as Maro Itoje on his first full game for the home side had a barnstorming display, stealing the ball at the breakdown and winning several line outs. He is a star in the making.
“The structure of our attack was excellent, but the finishing wasn’t,” Jones said afterwards.
A downbeat Irish coach Joe Schmidt accentuated the positive but asked the pubic not “to lose faith as we keep building.”
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