France sink England in World Cup warmup

Coach Stuart Lancaster’s World Cup preparations suffered a blow as for 70 minutes his preferred team of XV struggled.

France were worthy winners although they had to endure a nervy last 10 minutes when England, trailing 25-6 at the time, scored two quickfire tries.

“It was our first defeat in 15 matches, but it was the best thing that could have happened to us”. We always say players should look at the track record of agents when selecting them to make sure they have the best interests of the player at heart, but the horror stories from football indicate that’s not always the case.

He told Sky Sports: “We gave too many penalties away, but in the second-half we came out and played well but couldn’t quite get over the line in the end”.

Back, now 46, was a member of a settled England side 12 years ago, which started the World Cup in Australia as the top-ranked team, having beaten all major rivals.

“Training has been hard but I don’t think we could have expected anything else”. We were trying out new combinations, we came through it, played well and we won.

The French lost 19-14 to Stuart Lancaster’s men at Twickenham last Saturday and Saint-Andre is keen to cast an eye over all of his players before cutting back his squad from 36 to 31 on Sunday.

“We now have to take it up a notch”.

The good work was undone in a flash, however, as Michalak darted forward and cleverly sent Huget through a large gap, with Robshaw arriving too late to make the covering tackle.

“I don’t know if Tom’s place in the team is secure because he’s been up and down with his throwing”, said Moody.

“It was hard for both sides at scrum time and a few decisions didn’t go our way, but overall when we did get some ball we looked unsafe “.

With Ben Morgan still on his way back after a broken ankle and Nick Easter, who is on the bench tonight, behind on his conditioning after a back problem, Vunipola is the clear favourite to wear the No 8 jersey in next month’s World Cup opener against Fiji. It left us with a lot to do in the second half.

The 30-year-old had a stand-out season for Wasps, in which they made the European Champions Cup quarter-finals, and he carried this form into the Six Nations where he was strong in the breakdown.

“It was frustrating and we had to think of ways to adapt and that was constantly going through our minds”.

“You’ve got to balance the proximity of the tournament with all of the planning that goes into it”. If in our final warm-up game against Ireland (on September 5) we are still making the same number of errors, then the level of concern will be greater.