Sir Clive Woodward slams England after ‘huge setback’

The England rugby team has given us some fantastic performances over the last few weeks, and it looked like we were going to get yet another day to remember at the Principality, with a good start giving them a half-time lead.

England were playing Wales and started really well, going 10-3 up and looking like cruising their way to a very impressive win.

Unfortunately, though, it did not end up that way, much to the frustration of 2003 World Cup-winning coach Sit Clive Woodward.

“England got turned over partly because every team raises their game against them and they couldn’t handle it.” wrote Woodward for the Mail Online.

“I am in shock. England just seemed to stop playing in the second half and, as I have said previously, whichever side lost this game would find it hard to bounce back.

“England have Italy and Scotland at home to come, and four warm-up games before the World Cup. They have never lost to Italy in the Six Nations and have not lost to Scotland at Twickenham since 1983 — this was the crunch game in red in the diary and England came up short.

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“The pressure will come on Eddie and assistant John Mitchell because England just played too defensively. The ball hardly got past nine and 10, we just kicked the ball to death, it was like the old days.

“Our kicking game was awful. It was instructional that Wales’s winning try came from a good kick but England were not at the races after the break.

“We hardly saw the England midfield, Manu Tuilagi and Henry Slade, and this is going to be an incredibly hard loss for Eddie and his side to get over.”