No pictures of any Ireland players celebrating for this game for some reason so here's Manu Tuilagi touching down for England's opener. Don't think he even broke a sweat, which appears to be harder work for the Samoan than breaking Earls tackle!
Unsurprisingly Ireland’s World Cup build up ended in a whimper as a workmanlike England ground out a comfortable 20 – 9 victory. Ireland showed little imagination, often choosing the wrong option and the pack lacked the intensity at the breakdown of their English counterparts.
Ireland suffered a further setback with David Wallace now ruled out of the tournament with a knee injury, Shane Jennings has been called up as replacement.
As predicted England had too much pace for the Ireland defence and it wasn’t long before the defensive frailties of Ireland’s makeshift midfield were exposed with Manu Tuilagi brushing aside Keith Earls challenge in the fourth minute to score the opening try. Ireland’s experimentation has been so sparse over the last 18 months that they are now totally reliant on O’Driscoll remaining fit throughout the tournament.
You can read a match report here and highlights on BBC iPlayer for the next week or so but you’d probably be better off watching the documentary on Eddie Waring: Mr Rugby League if you ask me! 
The most worrying aspect for me was the scrums, which were totally destroyed, irrespective of Nigel Owen’s interpretation, and in my book Ireland could have been penalised at 90% of the clashes by another referee on another day. Russia, USA, and especially Italy, must be licking their lips in anticipation of getting to grips with the front five who, with the exception of O’Connell, have shown sporadic form. Certainly the last four games will have breathed fresh impetus into their World Cup preparations with all three now targeting Ireland as their big scalp, and frankly without O’Driscoll or O’Connell on the pitch you’d fancy their chances!
On a positive note Ferris came through the 80 minutes relatively unscathed, though there was a worry over a possible broken hand, and his participation is now more important with Wallace being ruled out.
Ireland must learn to play to their limited strengths, and unfortunately these strengths are becoming more and more limited with so many players out of form. As well as relying on the old standards of dogging it out through sheer commitment and intensity they now have to look at playing Ferris and O’Brien in tandem in a fairly basic game plan with these two brutes punching it up the middle for O’Gara or Sexton to pick up the points.
It ain’t going to be pretty but hopefully by the time the quarter finals come along the backs will have found some sort of form! What Ireland need to stop doing is to end this ridiculous pursuit of the Southern Hemisphere off loading game as they simply do not have the ball handling or decision making skills to execute this type of game under any sort of match pressure.
The number of times the ball was shipped on yesterday to stationary players in worse positions was unbelievable culminating in the ridiculous spectacle of Ferris, with only a prop to beat before heading into open space, shipping on to a touchline bound Earls. 12 months ago Big Stevie would have run over the top of fatty Cole, stopping the drifting defence in the process, before shipping on to Earls with a clear run to the line!
Keep it simple Kidney if Ireland are to make their way through to the play offs!
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