Saturday’s striking Six Nations games in Dublin and Edinburgh always felt like a potentially hard act to follow and so it proved. England will be suitably glad of this first victory under Steve Borthwick’s stewardship but it would stretching it to describe this as a contest which will linger long in the memory.
If there was no doubting the strength or effectiveness of England’s driving maul and their set piece, there was not always consistent fluency elsewhere until the talented replacement wing Henry Arundell provided a late spark with a sharp try on his Twickenham debut. The excellent Jack Willis, who suffered a serious leg injury in this fixture two years ago, also scored one of his side’s five tries on a day when the outcome was never really in doubt.
