It's now or never for England with pressure on Ashton to inspire Paris repeat

13 April 2012

England will be counted out of the Six Nations and condemned to another third-rate campaign unless they put the French in their place tonight.

Four months after presiding over the craziest defence in World Cup history, Brian Ashton revisits the scene of the Red Rose's heroic last stand demanding overdue proof that his misfiring team are on the road to somewhere.

Triumph: England players need to recreate the intensity of their World Cup victory over France

Shortly before midnight locally the World Cup runners-up will either have ridiculed the notion of France going to Cardiff next month for the Grand Slam or have dropped out of the RBS title race for the fifth consecutive season alongside the perennial plodders, Scotland and Italy.

The late kick-off underlines the urgency of the message — that it is high time England made sense of a championship which has induced an epidemic of head-scratching at the nonsensical nature of the home defeat by Wales followed by the scratchiest of wins in Rome.

Ashton, whose side's gallant failure here last October has earned him the admiration of the country and an appointment with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, knows that to lose again will unleash a barrage of awkward questions.

The England coach said: 'The players are well aware of the importance of this match, not just because it's France-England but because we need to see signs over 80 minutes that the team are starting to move in the right direction.

'You would hope the players see this as an opportunity to stand up and be counted. They are not daft.

'They are aware of what they have to do, namely, not lose another game.

'We have to back ourselves to carry on playing when we're in front and not shut up shop. International players should be good enough to prepare for every eventuality.'

England's are incapable in that respect, given how they surrendered a 13-point lead against Wales then squandered the majority of a 14-point advantage in Italy.

They lost the second halves by an aggregate margin of 34-3, which indicates that somebody, somewhere ought to be saying something different at half-time tonight.

Ashton said wishfully: 'If we have a 20-point lead against France, the players now know the process to go through to ensure they come out with a win.

'We know how we want to play. They are expecting us to play a forward-orientated game. They might be in for a shock.'

Whenever the chips have been down, France have been Ashton's salvation, not only in the semi-final here last October, when victory ensured he would keep his job, but at Twickenham last year, when England treated the championship to an exhilarating vision of how their head coach wants them to play.

Regrettably, they have not played like it since and, of the 20 players involved in putting France to the sword 11 months ago, only Toby Flood and Nick Easter re-appear this evening.

Ashton said: 'I'm not happy that we haven't played like that since. In the World Cup we deliberately turned away from the wide game to play in a way which would get us to the Final.

'We played a wide game against France last year and we've not been that far away from it at times over the last two games.'

If they are to blast the championship wide open, England will have to do it the old-fashioned way, by pummelling the French through the forwards.

Front row is the one area where they hold a marked superiority provided they have enough setpieces to exploit it, considering they had five put-ins against Wales and six against Italy.

France captain Lionel Nallet has spent the week trying to rectify the scrum weakness and erase the sight of too many French backsides being shoved up into the air.

'More often than not, England pull out a massive performance against France,' he said. 'They have this capacity to keep the ball.They have a complete team.'

To paraphrase John McEnroe, he cannot be serious. England look an incomplete team in urgent need of answers to nagging questions, like how to better use Lesley Vainikolo.

More seriously, there is the question of how to avoid a runaround from turbo-charged strike trio Vincent Clerc, Aurelien Rougerie and Cedric Heymans. Ashton said: 'Wouldn't it be great if we could outplay them at their own game?'

Great? More like suicidal. There is even less chance of it happening now that France's safety-first strategy has gone with Bernard Laporte.

Successor Marc Lievremont has gone to the other extreme, putting the heart of his team in the hands of a No 8, 9 and 10 with one Test start between them — and not a specialist goalkicker in sight.

Such high-risk strategy offers England hope that all is far from lost.

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