No American dreams here, just a painful 80-minute nightmare. Eddie Jones’s England were supposed to be footsore and weary only 96 hours after their opening game against Tonga but instead their forwards had far too much in the tank for their outclassed opponents en route to their second convincing pool win of this Rugby World Cup.
England’s eventual seven-try victory was also notable for the tournament’s first red card, shown to US flanker John Quill for a blatant shoulder charge to Owen Farrell’s head. Quill could have no argument at all about the decision but, with England already 38 points up, it had no effect on the outcome.
Time and again the Eagles had no answer to their opponents’ close-range driving game and only a clearly slippery ball prevented England from running complete riot. Had Jones’s side taken all their chances it could have been a total landslide but second-half scores by Joe Cokanasiga (two), Ruaridh McConnochie and Lewis Ludlam still ensured a convincing margin. At half-time the stadium public address blasted out Take Me Home, Country Roads and, privately, the Eagles’ players probably felt like heading back to West Virginia as well.
There was certainly never any danger of rugby’s equivalent of Belo Horizonte, where the United States famously beat England 1-0 in the 1950 football World Cup. England’s selection of Ford and Heinz at half-back would surely have impressed corporate America but otherwise there was little to delight US television viewers.
Nothing went right for the Eagles from the outset. This should have been a memorable occasion for the prop David Ainu’u, the second youngest front-rower to start a Rugby World Cup match at 19 years, 310 days old, but the fates had other plans. His evening lasted just two and a half minutes before he had to limp off, the game’s first scrum having twisted and buckled over the top of him.
It left his replacement, Olive Kilifi, to face the prospect of being shaken and stirred for 77 minutes and England instantly seized on their opponents’ early misfortune. Upping the tempo they successfully stretched the Eagles’ defence and Ford skipped through a sizeable gap to score between the posts with only five minutes on the clock.
England’s forward power relative to their opponents was already looking ominous and the only minor surprise was that it took another 20 minutes for them to add their second try. This time it came from an unstoppable driven lineout, finished by Billy Vunipola, after Ford had opted to go for the corner rather than kick a straightforward penalty.
A 14-0 lead was precisely the kind of cushion England had been seeking on a sultry, humid evening beneath the closed roof of this nicely-proportioned, atmospheric stadium. While they still conceded a handful of early penalties, there was far more snap to their play than there was during their opening game against Tonga and, moist palms or not, they also held on to the ball on a more regular basis.
Another strong collective drive soon paid more dividends for the Exeter hooker Luke Cowan-Dickie, who has now scored four tries in his past six matches having failed to make it on to the scoresheet in his first 11 Tests. From 19-0 up at the interval the only question was how many points England would ultimately score and whether they could avoid injuries. Farrell was fortunate indeed that Quill’s crass shoulder did not cause any serious damage and England responded in the best possible manner, Cokanasiga surging over for his second try five minutes from the end.