Within minutes of losing a man France also lost their lead Caught on the wrong foot by the side-stepping Robinson, Dominici threw out his left leg and caught his opponent across the shins. Not only did he depart for the sin-bin in disgrace, he departed with a limp that would prevent his return.Within minutes of losing a man, France also lost their lead. The Biarritz flanker hoovered up a line-out throw initially aimed at Harinordoquy, slipped away from Hill and Steve Thompson on a 20-metre rampage towards the England line, broke a weak tackle from Jason Robinson and half-grounded the ball as the cover clattered into him. Andrew Cole, the Australian official charged with the video-viewing duties, spent an entire epoch examining the available footage before making his decision.Here was the meat of the game. Four points adrift at 3-7, England knew that another French try, or even a brace of penalties, might hurt them terminally, and they were relieved to see Michalak go wide with a couple of shots from the left of the sticks. It was not until Christophe Dominici, a 24-carat Tricolore hero in the 1999 tournament, suffered one of his temperamental blood-rushes that the game turned. Fr?ric Michalak, the new poet-executioner of Tricolore rugby and by common consent the man of the tournament, did some good things early on his conversion of Serge Betsen's try was a masterpiece of precision and some desperate things thereafter. He failed to keep pace with Wilkinson in the place-kicking duties and after watching his rival exert a garrotte-like grip on proceedings, he fell from grace in a flurry of sliced clearances and wrong choices.The try by Betsen rocked England to the core, for they feared the prospect of playing catch-up rugby in conditions specifically designed for lead protection. But after his third, just before the hour mark, Wilkinson returned to his more familiar penalty routine and took England out of sight with a pair of beauties in the final quarter.What price Jonny the basket case now? "He's taken a whole lot of stick, all of it unwarranted in my opinion," said an exasperated Johnson afterwards. "He kept us ticking over in a close game and controlled it all brilliantly People were asking last week if he'd turned the corner. Christ." For his part, Wilkinson described the conditions as "interesting".
He's a wild one, for sure.Compellingly, it was the real wild child who retreated into his shell and ended up suffering the humiliation of public substitution. How England needed him to rediscover some authority, and how he delivered.His marksmanship did not touch the heights of Wellington in June, when he kicked the All Blacks to defeat in the most testing conditions imaginable, but it was pretty damned special all the same Especially the drop goals. There were three of them, each and every one a spear in the collective heart of the opposition. At one point, it seemed perfectly possible that he would emulate Jannie de Beer, the Springbok outside-half, who famously dumped England out of the 1999 tournament by landing five of the blighters. As Fabien Galthi?his captain, admitted: "The errors we made were small, but their effect was massive." England always planned to tighten up their game for this occasion. Trevor Woodman and Phil Vickery, the West Country props, were expected to scrummage, not faff around on the wings; Richard Hill, back in harness after four long weeks gravitating between the exercise bike and the physiotherapist's table, was under orders to restore some cohesion to the back row in the face of a mighty threat from a beautifully balanced French combination And behind them stood Jonny Wilkinson.. poor, confused, out-of-sorts Jonny. Imanol Harinordoquy, a multi-talented sportsman if ever there was one, was their serial offender. The Basque No 8 has the hands of a basketball player and the eye of a pelota aficionado, but if he knocked on once, he knocked on half a dozen times. It was one of the great displays of wet-weather rugby and the Tricolores, who had experienced something similarly soggy in South Africa in 1995, did not begin to understand the question, let alone come up with an answer.While England clung to the ball as though their international careers depended on it which in the cases of Johnson, Neil Back and Lawrence Dallaglio was probably the case the French frittered it away like so many rich debauchees tucking francs into the garters of their mistresses. On this evidence, Napoleon was wrong; these particular Englishmen would not sell a drop of water to a thirsty man in a desert. Martin Johnson and company hoarded so much possession yesterday, they were in danger of being reported to the Monopolies Commission. |
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