Eddie Jones said only England’s players and coaches believed they could beat Ireland in Dublin. Well, that belief was well founded. England won, in real style – with a bonus point and by 12 points. Even they surely did not believe the margin would be so emphatic.
If this Six Nations manages to touch the heights it has hit in Wales’s comeback win over France on Friday and this game again, then we are in for a very special Championship indeed. Either way, Ireland will not be winning a Grand Slam like they did in 2018, and the title race is right open.
For England, there were superb efforts across the park. From man of the match Mako Vunipola’s 77-minute, 25 tackle effort at tighthead, to the performance of Henry Slade, who scored the decisive try with 15 minutes to go and another 10 minutes later, at outside centre.
Besides one unfortunate spill on his own 22, Slade was simply excellent.
To limit Ireland to two tries (one of them, from replacement John Cooney, in the penultimate minute) while breaching their celebrated defence four times was a special effort.
The first half was played at a rare lick and pitch which refused to let up. England’s wingers, Jonny May and Jack Nowell, were everywhere, including – in Nowell’s case – packing down at flanker while Tom Curry was sin-binned, fulfilling one of Eddie Jones’s ambitions.
May scored one try and Nowell’s hunting and harrying created the other for Elliot Daly. Up front, Mako Vunipola had already made 14 tackles and Curry, whose only mistake was the late hit that brought his card, made nine, many of them off first phase.
England looked as on it as Eddie Jones had claimed they would be and, while they had 15 players on the field, were the better side. When Curry was rightly binned for a late hit on Keith Earls, they did not conceded a point but were under constant pressure which told the moment he returned.
Johnny Sexton put a kickable penalty to the corner and Ireland probed away until Cian Healy crossed. Sexton’s conversion from the right made it 10-7, Ireland’s first lead.
That leaded corrected England’s advantage, which had come in just the second minute when May crossed following Owen Farrell’s almost impossibly flat pass led Daly to feed the winger in the left corner. Sexton’s penalty trimmed the advantage by three.
Ireland’s lead, hard earned as it was, lasted just five minutes when Slade’s lovely grubber off his wrong foot, his right, forced Robbie Henshaw into a poor kick for touch on Ireland’s 22. The lineout that followed laid the foundations for the second try, which came when Nowell pressured Jacob Stockdale into spilling Daly’s grubber and England’s full-back dotted down.
The penalty Farrell put over on the stroke of halt-time to extend the lead to seven was the only one Ireland would concede in the first 59 minutes, and that came when under extreme pressure on their own line. England had been offered nothing.
The intensity did not drop in the second half, and the bruises turned into game-ending bumps. Second rows Maro Itoje (moments after his lock partner George Kruis had been removed tactically) and Devin Toner were forced off injured, while Lions team-mates Peter O’Mahony and Kyle Sinckler scrapped.
England gave away their seventh penalty, and Sexton trimmed the lead by three. When Ireland finally gave their second away, Farrell missed to the left from 40 metres.
England’s nascent centre pairing of Slade and Manu Tuilagi, who lasted until the 77th minute having been making punchy carries in the first, looked like they had been together years and as the game opened up, Slade profited.
He held his run perfectly to gather May’s nudge forward when sprinting down the left – a wonderful try – before, with the game all but won, his pressure saw Sexton throw one pass too many in his own 22. Slade intercepted, then recovered his own spill to put the icing on a famous English win.
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