Star flyhalf Jonny Wilkinson produced a piece of trademark magic as late tries by Iain Balshaw and Phil Vickery allowed England to avoid the biggest upset in Rugby World Cup history on Sunday as the tournament favorites battled to a 35-22 win over Samoa.
England had gone into the match strongly favored to win by 40 points or more but found the Pacific Islanders anything but easybeats in what was easily the best game of the championship so far.
The Samoans led 10-0 early and 16-13 at half time before Clive Woodward's men emerged on top in a gripping second half. But not before being given the fright of their lives.
England escaped with the points but Samoa got much of the kudos, completing a "lap of honor" afterwards in front of the 50,000-plus crowd.
"We came here to compete" and "I'm very proud of my boys," said Samoa captain and No. 8 Semo Sititi after the match.
"We had belief in ourselves to do the job for our country."
England captain Martin Johnson was as relieved as Woodward and the rest of his team afterwards. He said the English had made "too many mistakes" and Samoa had "played great, credit to them."
"They could have beaten us, simple as that," Johnson said. "We're going to have to look at ourselves this week because that's not good enough. That's not going to win anything.
"We didn't touch the ball for [the first] 15 minutes. They played brilliantly well with width, they deserved their try and it could have been more.
"But we came back in the second half. I thought we were going to come through but there were too many mistakes again from us.
"The way we're going we're not going to win next week [against Uruguay] let alone the quarterfinal."
The Pacific Islanders had started superbly, disrupting England's usually clinical play but began to tire in the final quarter of the match. They were put under huge pressure by the England forwards and, although Woodward's men gained a third victory to reach the quarterfinals, it could have been a humiliating defeat.
A huge underdog going into the game, the Samoans were 10-0 ahead inside eight minutes.
Flyhalf Earl Va'a, who went into the game on 27 points and was once backup to Wilkinson at Newcastle, kicked the Samoans ahead after four minutes with an angled penalty.
England went into the game the only team not to concede a try but that was all over within eight minutes.
Flying winger Lome Fa'atau broke through on the right and, with the English defense pulled out of position, the ball was fed quickly through five pairs of hands to Sititi, who had a superb game, to go over.
Va'a landed the conversion and England was suddenly down 10 points and looking shaken as the Samoans came out full of fight and produced their trademark spontaneous play, swinging the ball across the field and tackling strongly.
The Samoans had a chance to go further ahead when Va'a hit the left upright with a penalty kick from around 42m. Wilkinson had already missed with an earlier penalty attempt from 47m out.
But England began to regroup and, after the Samoans were guilty of a ruck infringement in the England half, scored its first try.
Wilkinson launched a huge kick downfield and, from the resultant lineout, one of England's controversial rolling mauls -- with Neil Back dubiously bound at the back -- led to a try for the veteran back row. Wilkinson converted and Samoa's lead was cut to 10-7.
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