England’s winning run rolls on to 12 consecutive matches in some style, but even the most ardent among the Twickenham faithful may have found this a somewhat uncomfortable watch. This was a contest in name only, as one-sided a game as any Six Nations fixture in recent memory, and more than a little dispiriting, too. Welsh visits to this grand old ground are usually forged on the ferocity of rivalry and genuine enmity – there was none of that here, helpless prey gobbled up by a side increasingly proving themselves as voracious predators towards the top of the Test food chain.
If this had been showing on the Discovery channel rather than ITV, viewers might have looked away. In last year’s edition in Cardiff, England had produced one of their most complete showings to take a beleaguered, battered Wales to pieces, but they did not have to find that sort of fluency or form here. The visitors were ill-disciplined, ill-matched and ill-prepared, and got what they deserved. Two years ago, even on their way to a wooden spoon, Wales had come to Twickenham and put up an almighty fight, scrapping for everything on a wretched day and almost emerging still standing. Though there was something of a second-half rally, this was leagues below that level. How the not-so-mighty have fallen.
