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Nick Easter, Jonny Wilkinson & Thierry Dusatoir
Nick Easter, Jonny Wilkinson & Thierry Dusatoir
'Our big game players played well'
25 February 2008, 11:33 am
By Jason Leonard
My reaction was joy and a little bit of relief to see England not only win in a great stadium away from home in Paris, but the manner of their victory. They played really intelligently and I don't think France were actually in the game.
We had domination up front. Our big game players played well. Everyone involved in the team can be rightfully quite proud of that performance. There are not many teams who go to Paris and quite clinically take France to pieces.

France have been given a blank piece of paper by their coach, Marc Lievremont, and they've been told to go out and play. It's a new way of doing things - I've never been coached by anyone who has done that.

You could see the difference was England had structure, they had a game plan: force them into mistakes and make them pay for those mistakes. It was very reminiscent of the World Cup semi-final in 2007 where in the last quarter England actually got stronger and gained in confidence whereas France fell to pieces.

Phil Vickery played very well in the scrum with England's domination up front. Steve Borthwick had a good game, Nick Easter was man of the match but there were three or four of them who could have had it. Jonny Wilkinson played great. Richard Wigglesworth, the scrum-half coming in for his first full game, very rarely put a foot wrong.

That's what we wanted from England in the previous two games. That's what Brian Ashton demanded from his players and he certainly got that on Saturday night in Paris.

England should approach the game against Scotland in very much the same manner. They should use their big forwards to control the game, the half backs to control the tempo and where you attack in the game. Also, it gives the guys an opportunity to express themselves. When Paul Sackey or Lesley Vainikolo get involved in the game they either score tries or create them for other people.

The biggest danger for England is underestimating Scotland, who have lost all their games so far, but always raise their game against England at Murrayfield. They always have done and England know that. They're not naïve enough to think Scotland will be a pushover. It's fine going in with confidence but you don't want to be over confident because Scotland are a team that can upset the odds and produce one fantastic game in this RBS 6 Nations.


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