And just when you thought it was safe to come out from behind the sofa. Steve Borthwick’s England had the misfortune to finally run into a team in some sort of form in Lille on Saturday, and the hard-won gains they had made over the course of the tournament seemed to slip right back away from them again.
All of a sudden, they looked like the same dull and lumpen lot who went down to Fiji in a warm-up game before the tournament. Samoa almost made it a double. They had never got within eight points of beating England before, but it took a 73rd-minute try to stop them winning this time.
