The centre’s barnstorming performance helps soften up
Ireland as Eddie Jones’s ornery, outsize team give a glimpse of what they are capable of at their best
It had been six months to the very day since
England last played at Twickenham, in a
World Cup warm-up against Ireland, and that was a handsome victory too, even prettier than this one. Since then, they’ve been halfway around the world and back again, one step away from the top of it, too, when they lost to
South Africa in the final.
They’ve clocked up a lot of miles, a fair few wins and those two telling defeats, the one in Yokohama and the other in
Paris, since. And now they were back. In more ways than one, since they were playing something like the way they did last autumn when they won those two matches against Australia and New Zealand.