Chris Hewett: The wheels are off and Jonny's not driving

COMMENT

There are only two wheels left on the England wagon, which may not be rolling much further through this tournament.

The silence around the red rose camp after the agonisingly tight scrape against a wonderfully enterprising Welsh team was broken only by the sounds of the coaching staff in full four-letter mode and poor Jonny Wilkinson still barking up the wrong tactical tree.

Needless to say, the noise levels were far louder in Melbourne, where the French and the All Blacks were in hysterics.

Wales outscored the odds-on favourites by three tries to one - a tally that might easily have been five tries to one.

Had Robert Sidoli not dropped the ball over the line early in the first half, had the Welsh been awarded a penalty try midway through the second, had Stephen Jones kicked his goals ... rugby is full of such imponderables and none of them amount to much when the day is done.

However, there is no imagining what might have happened to the scoreline, the competition and England's collective sanity if one or two hairline incidents had turned out differently.

The fact that Clive Woodward, the England coach, gave his smiling French interrogators unusually short shrift during the after-match formalities was wholly indicative of his rising temper, which now borders on the Vesuvian.

If Woodward is serious about avoiding a repeat screening of this film noir, he will have to do something about Wilkinson, who had been building down to this performance all tournament.

Effectively, the coach began the process during Sunday's halftime interval. Dan Luger, a befuddled shambles on England's right wing, was withdrawn in favour of Mike Catt, who promptly took over the playmaking role in midfield and left Wilkinson to concentrate on his goal-kicking.

Catt turned the game, repeatedly finding space with his punting and threatening the Welsh loose forwards with his high-octane acceleration. So much for Jonny as a World Cup titan.

Before Catt's arrival, England seemed incapable of making a decision that did not explode in their faces like a third-former's stink bomb.

Woodward may have his foibles, but no fair-minded critic would accuse him of being a ditherer. By introducing Catt, he lifted the weight of the world from Wilkinson's sagging shoulders; by replacing Jason Leonard with Trevor Woodman, he injected some dynamism into a one-paced pack.

After Wilkinson had dropped a goal with the last kick of a captivating contest, it was left to Steve Hansen, the Wales coach, to make a pertinent point or two about England's chances.

"They've been under the hammer three times in this tournament, and they've won three times," he said.

"They have a lot of self-belief. But I always had questions in my mind about their defensive system and the fitness of their big tight forwards if we could work out a way of moving them around the park."

Needless to say, the French have similar questions. They also have the personnel to provide some answers.

- INDEPENDENT

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