Chris Hewett: England side are the outsiders

COMMENT

How many Englishmen would make it into a world team, picked purely on form on the evidence of this tournament?

More to the point, how many would make an Anglo-French XV? The answer is four, at most. Martin Johnson? Definitely. Ben Kay? Perhaps. Steve Thompson? Yes, assuming Keven Mealamu is not opposing him.

Jason Robinson? Maybe, if you don't mind playing a World Cup semifinal with a fullback who couldn't tell a running line from a cheeseburger.

Robinson sums up the England team right now: a powerful side, relentlessly coached and perfectly prepared, but wholly dependent on individual brilliance in the absence of collective confidence.

Where did the confidence go? Into the ether, the moment the Springbok forwards waded into the breakdown area in Perth a month ago, forced the Neil Backs and Lawrence Dallaglios into conceding penalties on the floor, and reduced Jonny Wilkinson to a nervous wreck.

England won the game, eventually - the one thing they have going for them in this tournament is their cussed ability to construct the silk purse of victory from the sow's ear of below-par performance.

Johnson is the central figure, an experienced, rugby pragmatist without a romantic bone in his body. He is a realist, first and last. Had he not been on the field against Samoa, England would have found themselves up against the All Blacks in Melbourne last weekend. Now there's a thought.

In a sense, England cannot win this weekend's semifinal against a vintage French outfit boasting at least four world-class players - Frederic Michalak, Fabien Galthie, Jean-Jacques Crenca and Olivier Magne - at the peak of their powers.

The best that can be said on behalf of the former tournament favourites is that France are extremely capable of losing it.

If England tighten their game, order their specialist players to perform according to the dictates of the numbers on their back, and kick their goals - for all his psychological distress Jonny Wilkinson is a good bet to rattle up 20 points with the boot - they could force Galthie and Co to combust spontaneously.

It has happened before - the quarter-final of the 1991 World Cup springs to mind - and it will undoubtedly happen again.

Whether it happens this weekend is a moot point. The French are on a mighty roll, and it is possible that Tony Marsh and Yannick Jauzion, two splendidly physical centres, will make a mess of an England midfield lacking the knock-'em-down spirit of Mike Tindall.

Then again, Mike Catt - Tindall's clubmate at Bath, and his nemesis here - may still be on the golden streak that carried him and his colleagues through the second half of last weekend's scratchy victory over Wales.

Make no mistake, Catt is included because of Wilkinson's shortcomings as a playmaker of international class. The outside-half's marksmanship is not to be underestimated - he has kicked 70-plus points in this tournament, many of them under considerable pressure - but the rest of his game is in bits.

It may be that Catt, awarded the freedom of the parish after Sunday's transforming contribution, will continue to give England something extra in attack.

More likely, he will simply seek to put the ball behind the French backline and allow his forwards to play the game in the opposition red zone.

It may sound boring, but needs must. England cannot hurt France in the wide areas with Wilkinson away with the fairies and Will Greenwood out of position.

Johnson will demand a serious scrummaging effort from Phil Vickery, who is not always the greatest at the set-piece, and rely on Kay to rule the lineout.

World Cup semifinals have been decided in more lavish style - the French themselves have managed it twice - but as Clive Woodward keeps on saying: "It's about winning. Nothing else matters."

* Chris Hewett is senior rugby writer for the Independent.