England struggling for form ahead of first Test
Australia will be l*****g their lips with anticipation at the thought of the first Test against a ragged England on Saturday.
Martin Johnson’s team’s preparation for the Test series failed to go to plan, as they could only muster a 28-28 draw with the Australian Barbarians.
It was the relatively unknown skills, to the English viewers anyway, of Wallaby international full-back James O’Connor that saw the Barbarians race into a 15-point lead. The teenage starlet racked up 25 points, including three tries, two conversions and two penalties. It was not until the hour mark, when coach Robbie Deans decided to withdraw six of his first string, including O’Connor, that England managed to seriously challenge their opponents. And despite their late rally, with tries from Dan Ward-Smith and Matt Banahan, they really should have lost the game, as Berrick Barnes missed a last minute penalty for the hosts.
Manager Johnson was brutally honest as ever, admitting his side made too many errors, but did however reveal that the game was informative about how Australia will play on June 12th.
"We expected them to play like Australia play and they pretty much did," he said.
“We gave them a short field too many times in the first half and they came back at us. It was a performance where we did lots of good things but we also compounded a few errors, putting us into real strife. When we did what we wanted to do it worked well but when we didn’t execute we got ourselves into trouble.”
A prime example of the poor attacking play came in the second half. After some impressive forward play, the move broke down with an array of wild passes and poor movement which resulted in a loss of 40 yards before Charlie Hodgson was forced to boot the ball downfield. This brought a chorus of boos from the home faithful, "Hey ref, penalise the buggers for being boring," yelled one
member of the paying public.
Arguments can be made that this was far from the strongest line-up that England could have fielded, but the Test on Saturday will be three times as tough against a free-flowing Australian back-line.
The thought of Matt Giteau, Drew Mitchell, Adam Ashley Cooper and O’Connor will leave Johnson with sleepless nights.
At least the fears of a complete tour whitewash have been scuppered, but this was no positive. England, even against sub-standard opponents, looked way out of their depth.
Big improvement is needed on Saturday.
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