DUNEDIN, New Zealand – While England is often characterized as reliant on forward power and brute force, the backs are shaping up to be a potent force at the Rugby World Cup.
With scrumhalf Ben Youngs raising the tempo and centre Manu Tuilagi repeatedly beating the first tackler, England showed against Romania just what it can do when it keeps hold of the ball.
Five of England’s seven starting backs touched down as England ran in 10 tries for a 67-3 win that puts their team firmly in control of Pool B.
But it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.
After all, flanker Tom Croft’s 67th-minute try was the first by a forward since James Haskell touched down early on in last month’s opening warmup against Wales – five matches and 18 tries ago.
That game on Aug. 6 was Tuilagi’s international debut, an occasion he marked with a try.
Wings Mark Cueto and Chris Ashton each scored a hat trick against Romania, but Tuilagi was central to the win.
He beat seven attempted tackles and made two clean breaks, setting up Ben Foden for a try with one and running in to touch down himself after the second to take his tally to four tries in five tests – and two in three at his first World Cup.
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“He’s a very, very good player,” manager Martin Johnson said. “When we picked him, everyone talked about brute force or a lack of creativity. But the guy can play rugby and some of the tries he’s scored have been about great lines of running.
“He’s been fantastic. He gets his head down and works hard to be the best player he can be. It’s good to have him.”
Tuilagi’s four older brothers all played for Samoa – Alesana Tuilagi is at this World Cup in Samoa’s 30-man squad – but the 20-year-old centre has progressed through England’s national set up from under-16 level all the way to the senior squad.
He scored seven tries in 15 starts in his debut season for club side Leicester, earning a call into England’s provisional World Cup training squad. But Johnson would have picked him even earlier if he could.
“It’s his first year playing club rugby this year with Leicester, so it’s a big year,” Johnson said. “He played for our second team during the Six Nations period and we didn’t get the chance to get him into our Six Nations squad. He had a little bit of an injury when there was a chance.”
Now first choice at outside centre, the only selection poser in the backs would appear to be whether Mike Tindall or Shontayne Hape plays inside him.
Hape scored the first two of England’s six tries in last week’s 41-10 win over Georgia but was rested against Romania, against whom Tindall started but did not score. Still, he featured in several moves and laid on the second of Cueto’s tries.
In his first World Cup appearance since the 2007 final, Cueto made his meagre return of one try in his last 25 internationals a distant memory with a 12-minute hat trick inside the first 26 minutes.
“When you play on the wing, often the opportunities will come because of everyone else’s hard work,” Johnson said. “There was some really crisp hands and he was the beneficiary of that early on. We know Cuets, when he’s got a chance, he’ll score. And when he wasn’t scoring, he was playing well.”
Ashton’s three tries, complete with trademark swan dive, took his tally to 14 in 16 internationals, while Youngs and Foden got the other scores in England’s third biggest win away from home.
The only two occasions on which England racked up a bigger winning margin overseas was in the pool stage of the 2003 World Cup, on its way to the title that year.
“The tempo of the game was difficult to maintain because there are lots of injuries and guys are getting tired, but when we played with tempo, they struggled to keep up with it,” Johnson said. “After the last 20 minutes last week, it was clear we had to retain the ball and not force it. And I thought we did a pretty good job of doing that.”
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