Beneath the beautiful curved roof of this wonderful arena, a 14-man England finally gave their long-suffering supporters something to cherish. The Rugby World Cup in France is only a couple of days old but it will take something extra special in the weeks ahead to eclipse this effort in terms of backs-to-the-wall resilience and good old-fashioned bulldog spirit.
England also had George Ford, who in terms of shaping a Test match enjoyed the most satisfying big game of his career. The Sale fly-half was world junior player of the year in his youth but here, on the ultimate stage, he surpassed that achievement by scoring all his side’s points in a kicking performance even Jonny Wilkinson would have found hard to match.
In addition to Ford’s six penalties and three drop goals, England’s defence was also multiple levels up from anything they have managed this year after the third-minute dismissal of Tom Curry following a head-on-head collision with a descending Juan Cruz Mallía. At that point, it seemed England were destined for another hard day’s night. In fact, with Ben Earl and Courtney Lawes leading the most steely and defiant of fightbacks, it revived golden memories of England’s equally hard-nosed World Cup win over Australia in this same city 16 years ago.
As choruses of Swing Low resounded around the ground, the Pumas will have been inwardly kicking themselves. A little more clear-headed calm and this could have been a famous South American triumph. Instead they charged brainlessly into contact, attempted ridiculous offloads that had little chance of succeeding and gave Ford the chance to nick a winnable game away from them.
And England, to their credit, needed no second invitation to snatch it from them. It made for a reliably bizarre spectacle from the moment Curry smacked heads with Mallía after just three minutes, earning himself the earliest red card for any player in men’s Rugby World Cup history and making him the first Englishman to be sent off at the tournament.
To have to play 77 minutes of their most important game for four years with reduced numbers on a warm, humid evening was clearly going to necessitate something special. A harsh call? Yes, in many ways, but it was also a sign of the times. What used to be seen as a “rugby collision” is not nearly so simple nowadays. The French referee Mathieu Raynal referred the matter upstairs to the bunker review team, who eventually decided Curry should not have arrived in such an upright position and, therefore, had to play the heaviest price.
Clearly it was a massive call from England’s perspective, particularly given the recent bans dished out to Owen Farrell and Billy Vunipola. Curry, only just back from an ankle injury himself, looked suitably distraught. The consequences were further magnified when the same bunker reviewers decided Santiago Carreras deserved only a yellow for following through late on Ford in an incident with echoes of the one that earned Mallía a recent ban for a similar charge on South Africa’s Grant Williams.
What next? The nerves of both sides were self-evidently jangling, as had those of many fans as they struggled to gain access to the stadium before kick-off. Previously it had been the perfect rugby day: English supporters offering to take happy souvenir snaps of singing Argentina fans at the Vieux Port, party time beneath a warm Mediterranean sun. For a moment it was almost possible to forget the major implications of this fixture for both sides.
And only the most blinkered of red rose followers had England as nailed-on pre-match favourites. On his day there are few better hookers in the world than Julián Montoya and, in Curry’s absence, Pablo Matera, Marcos Kremer and Juan Martín González would have expected to make hay in the back row, particularly given their opponents’ grisly August form.
What England did possess, though, was tons of motivation.
Even after Curry’s early departure they scrapped and harried and confounded their numerical disadvantage. And Ford, who knows his rugby better than most, had clearly been swotting up on Jannie de Beer and his string of five drop diamonds which famously knocked England out of the 1999 World Cup in Paris. Three times inside 11 minutes, with nothing much else on, he swung his right boot and the ball sailed straight through the uprights, giving his side renewed hope.
It might have been even better had England not twice unaccountably kicked the ball away in good attacking positions. The Pumas, possibly overly pumped for the occasion, were too busy playing into English hands with silly errors to build any sustained pressure and Emiliano Boffelli’s raking early penalty was, bizarrely, their only score of the first 40 minutes.
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There was no way, surely, that the Pumas, after a no-nonsense half-time audience with Michael Cheika, were going to re-emerge without fresh intent and purpose for the second half? Wrong again. Still the passes were shelled, still they ran into trouble. And still England tackled and tackled, each collision helping to erase the memories of their defensive uncertainty in the warm‑up games.
By the end, despite a late score for Rodrigo Bruni, there was only one team in it. So much for early red cards ruining games. If staring down the barrel is what it takes to rouse England properly, so be it. The snag is that Curry, unless cleared, now faces another ban. And there is no way Steve Borthwick can relegate Ford to the bench after this. Expect Farrell to be back at 12 against Japan as England, at long last, look to the future with a glint in their eye.
