KEY POINTS:
France 22
England 9
Judging from the way coach Brian Ashton spoke after England's second defeat to France in seven days, the World Cup holder's dream is all but over.
England won't be making history by becoming the first rugby world champions to retain their title, when the tournament
starts in France.
At the Stade Velodrome, where La Marseillaise is sung like no other battlecry on earth, France reduced England to a defensive role. They resisted gamely but in attack had the cutting edge of a Yorkshire pudding.
Ashton's team were comprehensively outplayed, a stream of telling statistics revealing the story of the game.
France dominated territory (62 per cent) and had more possession (58 per cent).
They forced England to make 122 tackles and made just 74 themselves.
The sin-binning of lock Simon Shaw for a high tackle compounded England's difficulties. While he was off, France scored 10 points.
Under such pressure in an often fractious game, England conceded 24 free kicks/penalties to 18. The die was cast and England found increasingly bizarre ways of giving away penalties under the pressure. Was Ashton concerned at that fact ?
"You would expect a lot more composure than we showed, it just wasn't there tonight. We only won two or three phases before we turned over the ball - we didn't just make mistakes and lack concentration when the pressure was at its height. We were doing that all the time.
"The biggest disappointment is the fact that the basics of our game which we did so well against Wales and then France last week, we didn't do anywhere near as well tonight.
"Last week there was anger in the dressing room [after a 21-15 defeat by France at Twickenham] because the players felt they should have won that game, but this time there is disappointment because they realise they did not play enough to win.
"You don't win games here if you don't get the fundamentals of the game right.
"We gave away a succession of free kicks, lost field position and seemed to forget the importance of field position after the opening quarter."
In truth, a flock of English chickens came home to roost on a warm, sultry south of France evening.
Ashton has been given the unenviable job of trying to play catch-up ever since he was handed the poisoned chalice with so little time left to the World Cup.
What became clear in Marseille is that England have some decent players but hardly any really great ones. And when you're talking about winning a World Cup, you need at least five or six in that category as the fulcrum of your side.
England won't be going far in the World Cup because they lack concentration and technical excellence, they have little or no creativity outside the pack and Ashton hasn't had time to gel a new side together in his own image.
It is a supreme irony that Ashton, one of the foremost attacking-minded coaches in Europe, is having to focus his philosophy on grinding forward play to get England over the gain line.
They lacked any spark of invention behind the scrum, but then playing the game on the back foot tends to mean the backs have few ways to go.
The French, by contrast, looked an improved side. They were disciplined, focused, quicker and cleverer than England.
They had an extra yard or two of pace on their old foes and they looked slicker in possession, willing to try things and showing their potential behind the scrum with a revitalised Frederic Michalak back and sparking the three-quarter line from first five-eighths.
Whether coach Bernard Laporte would risk the fragile Michalak in a cup semifinal is another matter. But in Marseille, he brought invention, the element of unpredictability and cunning to France's attacking game. Against some leaden-footed defending, he gave a sparkling show.
The lesson for England from a match that produced only one try, by Yannick Jauzon, such has been the complete mania for defence in Northern Hemisphere rugby of recent times, is that you cannot waste 3 1/2 years between cups and then expect to drag triumph out of the jaws of disaster in the last six months before the next tournament.
- additional reporting Independent on Sunday, Reuters
Peter Bills is a sports writer for Independent News & Media in London
