The post from Jamie George on social media was typically wry. “There’s life in the old dogs yet,” George quipped beneath a snap of the England hooker and old mucker Elliot Daly, with the pair good mates, club colleagues and international stalwarts. Across the best part of 200 combined caps, the duo have seen just about everything there is to see in Test rugby, plenty of highs, plenty of lows, and plenty in-between.
Yet even George and Daly’s sage heads might have struggled to make sense of it all on Saturday evening. It had been an entirely curious, at times incomprehensible contest, France seemingly seconds from accelerating out of sight repeatedly yet each time contriving to drop the ball. On another day, none of Antoine Dupont, Damian Penaud or Peato Mauvaka fumble with the line in sight and France would have continued on their grand slam march.
