A relieving, bonkers win for a depleted England may yet come at a serious cost. A red card for Owen Farrell has placed the fly-half’s participation in the opening World Cup pool fixture against Argentina in Marseille next month under a major cloud and his head coach, Steve Borthwick, could easily find himself without his talismanic captain.
Farrell was initially shown yellow for a 63rd-minute shoulder to the head of the Wales replacement Taine Basham only for the punishment to be upgraded by the television match official under the new “bunker” review system. England’s skipper could have few complaints and, given his previous disciplinary history, may struggle to find much sympathy at his hearing in the coming days.
Less than four weeks before the tournament’s opening game, furthermore, the Leicester scrum-half Jack van Poortvliet also appears to be a significant doubt after being carried off in obvious discomfort in the first half with a damaged lower right leg. It did not look good and England’s management may well now have to make alternative arrangements.
Despite being reduced to 12 players at one stage, with Freddie Steward and Ellis Genge also in the bin, England still somehow managed to clinch victory in Farrell’s absence, courtesy of a close-range 68th-minute try from Maro Itoje and a penalty and conversion from George Ford.
Despite the late drama, though, this was not an 80 minutes to encourage English or Welsh supporters that a life-enhancing autumn awaits them on French soil. Never mind the respective merits of Barbie and Oppenheimer, this was frequently a Saturday night horror show from a variety of perspectives. Had they lost, as seemed likely until Wales’s last-quarter collapse from 17-9 ahead with 15 minutes left, England would have sunk to ninth in World Rugby’s rankings, below Australia, Argentina and Wales. They narrowly avoided that fate but for both sides this was frequently another head-scratching afternoon.
Wales, with a much-changed XV, can at least claim a moral aggregate victory over two legs by a margin of 37-28 and four tries to one. On the flip side they also now have injury doubts hanging over captain Dewi Lake and number eight Taine Plumtree, while Basham failed his head injury assessment and is set to miss next weekend’s game against South Africa. Warren Gatland will be frustrated by his pack’s failure to nail down a win which had seemed within the team’s grasp and, along with his opposite number Borthwick, will know improvement will be needed if their World Cup pools are not to prove treacherous.
These are strange days for English rugby union all round. Hope and glory? The latter has been in short supply for some time and stocks of the former have also been dwindling. The pre-match talk had all been about England making some kind of positive statement. Beyond the result there was also a clear need to re-engage more hearts and minds. Back in the day England either won or lost but the patrons were still guaranteed to turn up in optimistic droves. Now the sporting marketplace is more crowded and choices less binary. People were watching the Lionesses in the pubs of Twickenham and there were even Hull KR shirts visible in Richmond High Street.
Entertainment-wise, the Ashes series has also set a high bar. It did not help in promotional terms, then, that a printing error required all the official match programmes to be scrapped. It left many of those in attendance with no option but to sit back and wait for someone in red or white to do something eye-catching.
Few could rise to the challenge in the opening 40 minutes, with the game unfolding along largely generic lines. England were overwhelmingly structured and playing the percentages, Wales occasionally prepared to think outside the box and not just kick down Steward’s throat. England, for the second successive week, were guilty of coughing the ball up in contact too often and the premature departure of an injured Lake – the second successive game in which Wales have had to make an enforced early hooker change – did not help either.
Could England, 6-0 ahead at the break courtesy of two Farrell penalties, crank things up a gear or three? It should have helped considerably when Tommy Reffell was sent to the sin-bin at a ruck less than a minute into the second half after the Georgian referee, Nika Amashukeli, decided that a rash of first-half Welsh offences should not cease to matter simply because of a 15-minute dressing-room hiatus.
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Instead England’s discipline completely unravelled. Genge, winning his 50th cap, was sent to the sin-bin at a scrum within a couple of minutes of coming on and Steward, unluckily sent off against Ireland in Dublin in March, was probably lucky to see only yellow after taking out Josh Adams in the air wide on the left. Wales were subsequently awarded a penalty try and were soon handed another gift.
Farrell, only the ninth man to be sent off for England, was always liable to have his yellow card swapped for a red and so it proved. Wales would take advantage, surely, and when Joe Roberts burst clear and fed Tomos Williams for a gallop to the posts an away win looked all but guaranteed. Somehow, aided by a crumbling Welsh scrum, England dodged that bullet but they will be mighty fortunate if Farrell is now available to kick off their World Cup campaign.
