England ground down a feisty Scotland team to secure a 22-16 victory on Sunday and remain on course for their first Six Nations grand slam in eight years.
Scotland, who had lost their opening three games and not won at Twickenham since 1983, scrapped furiously in a match strewn with errors and England did not pull clear until Tom Croft’s try in the 69th-minute.
The Scots still hit back with a Max Evans try, only for replacement Jonny Wilkinson to settle England’s nerves with a last-ditch penalty.
Photo: AFP
England will travel to Dublin this week with the title almost certainly in their grasp, but needing victory to complete a grand slam.
“Teams are seeing what we’re doing and having a plan to stop it, which is a compliment in a way as they probably weren’t doing that 18 months or two years ago,” England manager Martin Johnson told reporters. “We’ve got a good balance, but we’ve just got to be a bit smarter.”
England top the championship standings with eight points from four wins. Wales, second on six points, are the only team who can deny Johnson’s team, but to do so they would need to win in Paris and see England lose in Ireland.
Photo: AFP
There would also need to be a 42-point swing in points difference, an unlikely scenario given the teams’ respective records.
Although, England looked a long way from Grand Slam contenders for long periods on Sunday as the rugby failed to reach the excitement levels produced when a fox trotted around the pitch for five minutes before kickoff.
Three Flood penalties to two from Chris Paterson and a drop goal by Ruaridh Jackson made it 9-9 at the break.
Photo: AFP
England eventually began to dominate possession and territory, but coughed up the ball repeatedly in the face of some fierce work by the Scots at the breakdown.
The game turned in the 57th minute when Scottish flanker John Barclay was sin-binned for killing the ball in front of the posts. Flood slotted the resulting penalty and in the 10 minutes of numerical advantage England scored 10 points.
Paterson initially kept Scotland in the game with a brilliant try-saving tackle on Ben Foden and Johnson immediately made a quadruple substitution, with Wilkinson and Croft among the new boys.
Moments later another Foden break and a neat Mark Cueto offload allowed Croft to score the opening try and Wilkinson converted to put England 19-9 ahead.
However, Scotland were not about to throw in the towel and hit back when wing Evans cleverly collected his own chipped kick. Paterson converted to keep his side within three points.
England regrouped and when they forced another penalty in the final moments it was Wilkinson’s left boot that sent it through the posts to give his side four wins in a row for the first time since their run to the 2007 World Cup final.
“We’re not happy with the way we played, especially in the first half, but you’ve got to give a lot of credit to Scotland, they took us on and we made it hard for ourselves on top of that,” captain Mike Tindall said. “It’s good to see when you’re not playing that well you can still get those wins, but Ireland will watch what Scotland have done to us at breakdown time so we have a lot of work to do.”
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