This is the week that will define England’s Rugby World Cup campaign.
Sunday’s quarter-final against Fiji is the acid test that will determine the view on Steve Borthwick’s nascent Red Rose tenure.
Win, and whatever happens in France after that, Borthwick can look forward to a far more measured stint at the helm. Lose, and, well, no one connected with England needs another chaotic, finger-pointing, post-tournament review.
By the law of averages, England should not lose to Fiji again, especially so soon after their 30-22 humbling at Twickenham in August.
England’s biggest worry, however, is that nothing about Fiji follows any mean, median or even modal system.
An inspired Portugal edged Fiji on Sunday night, with a 24-23 victory that had Os Lobos players crying on the pitch despite the Pacific Islanders still reaching the quarter-finals.
For many madcap minutes, Australia were almost back from the dead and into a last-eight meeting with England.
Bill Sweeney should have been the most relieved man in France on Sunday night that the coach he fired in December cannot come back to haunt England in the quarter-finals.
The RFU chief executive insisted when appointing Borthwick as the new head coach just before Christmas that facing Jones’s Australia at the World Cup would prove a “great day”.
Fortunately for the RFU bosses, Australia’s malaise means Jones does not have the chance to put one over his former employers.
Play as they did in Saturday’s tense 18-17 win over Samoa in Lille, however, and England will be beaten by Fiji again.
England managed to turn a month of warm-up misery in August into a masterful 27-10 victory over Argentina to open this tournament. And now Borthwick’s men can repeat that feat.
Just as England expect to be far more effective than in the scrappy win over Samoa, so too, though, will Fiji be a team transformed from Sunday night’s loss.
Danny Care conjured England’s face-saving try against the spirited and physical Samoans, then had to spare his own blushes as well of those of his team.
The protective bubble is over and either England burst into life, or pop goes the tournament
The scrum-half toasted his late score with an Alan Shearer-style celebration, wheeling around the stadium with one arm aloft. Samoa raced straight up the other end, though, leaving Care to produce a try-saving tackle on Neria Fomai.
Care admitted the football celebration would have been cringeworthy without the face-saving tackle. “If you decide to do a Shearer celebration, you’d better make that tackle afterwards,” he said.
England have had four matches in five weeks, staying mostly here in the pastoral idyll of the Opal Coast. Now everything rests on one match amid the mean streets of Marseille.
The protective bubble is over and either England burst into life, or pop goes the tournament.
