Italy 9 England 40 match report: Jonathan Joseph hat-trick keep Eddie Jones' Six Nations campaign on course

Italy 9 England 40

England centre Jonathan Joseph (Getty Images)

The Azzurri have had some rotten luck down the years – judging by the nature of their defeat in France on the opening weekend of this Six Nations, they are the only people on the planet who could pursue a payment protection insurance claim and discover it had been sold to them legally – but equally often, they have been the authors of their own misfortune. The latest culprits? Carlo Canna and Leonardo Sarto.

England were a mere two points ahead, midway through the third quarter, and unloading their replacements’ bench in mild but growing panic when Jack Nowell, the workaholic wing from Cornwall, cleared the red-rose lines by banging the ball downtown with all the strength he could muster. Canna, a talented outside-half but still green as the proverbial grass, gambled on a quick line-out throw, thereby dropping Mattia Bellini into a world of trouble close to his own line. The inevitable outcome? A high-risk pass from Sarto to Michele Campagnaro that was so utterly predictable it led to the softest of interception tries for Jonathan Joseph.

It was the moment that broke Italy into tiny pieces: thereafter, they were nothing more than a pale shadow of the team who had forced England into error after error in phase after phase. Joseph would go on to complete a hat-trick before his fellow centre, Owen Farrell, topped and tailed things six minutes from time following an off-load from the substitute hooker Jamie George that was almost as accomplished as Mako Vunipola’s pitch-perfect pass at Murrayfield eight days previously. These front-rowers are getting ideas above their station.

By close of play, the Azzurri were heading for the seven hills on which Rome was constructed and wondering if it might take them an eternity to beat England here in the Eternal City. For 52 minutes, they had half-believed this might be their day – a state of mind that, on this occasion at least, had not involved the purchase of a one-way group ticket to cloud cuckoo land. Yet in the 28 minutes that followed, they conceded at a rate of one point every 50-odd seconds.

England’s first-half performance was ragged, to put it mildly: George Ford threw an interception pass of his own in the opening exchanges – on another day, Bellini’s kick ahead would have caused really serious trouble – and, within the blink of an eye, the outstanding Campagnaro could be seen running through both Joseph and Farrell in the space of a few metres. Throw in a loss of possession in contact by Billy Vunipola, of all people, and some effective line-out burglary from George Fabio Biagi, and it was obvious that the visitors were miles off their game.

There was a further scare after a quarter of an hour when Farrell, the one player rendered irreplaceable by England’s bench selection, finished a distant second in a collision with the magnificently hirsute Gonzalo Garcia and left the field for a concussion assessment – a decision that appeared to be taken by the referee, Glen Jackson, rather than any member of the England staff. The hard-nut midfielder returned soon enough, happily for Eddie Jones and his coaching team, but it was an uncomfortable moment nonetheless.

Within three minutes of reappearing with the blessing of the red-rose medics, Farrell found himself at the heart of the game’s first try… and, indeed, its best. A high kick to the edge of the Italian 22 was chased hard by Joseph and, after the centre had made the initial contact, the full-back Mike Brown joined the ruck with a vengeance and managed to exacerbate the chaos by toe-poking the ball towards the sticks.

England claimed possession quickly and when Billy Vunipola performed a decent impersonation of his brother – his reverse pass bore a striking similarity to Mako’s brilliant delivery against Scotland – the supporting Farrell was able to free Ford on a run to the corner.

That gave the visitors a five-point cushion, but the Italians pressed them to distraction for the rest of the half and closed to within a couple by the interval. They might have made further progress but for early injuries to the lock Marco Fuser, the influential flanker Alessandro Zanni and the ever-combative Garcia, but the main issue was the amount of ball they chucked on the floor at close quarters. Time and again the great No 8 Sergio Parisse tried to wrong-foot and discombobulate the red-rose defence with little pop passes left and right, but the Azzurri would surely have been better served by their best player retaining possession and driving upfield – by their captain taking even more responsibility than usual rather than less.

Once Joseph had poached his opening try, Parisse joined the vast majority of his countrymen in sliding into irrelevance. Five minutes after the interception pass, the Bath centre cottoned onto a neat little grubber kick from the replacement half-back Danny Care and touched down beneath the crossbar. A dozen minutes later, he ploughed through some soft Italian tackling following a two-pronged assault from the locks George Kruis and Joe Launchbury, who put themselves amongst it in the Italian 22 and caused all manner of mayhem.

By that time, the likes of Maro Itoje, Jack Clifford and Paul Hill, all of them uncapped ahead of the tournament, were running around Rome as though they owned the place after joining the fray. Itoje, quite possibly the most talked-about England newcomer since some bloke by the name of Wilkinson first set foot in the international arena almost two decades ago, did some nice things – an alert and athletic supporting of Anthony Watson’s open-field break; a terrific turnover on Campagnaro to snuff out the last concerted Italian attack – but with the game already won, it was impossible to award him the crown jewels for his performance.

He may or may not feature in the next game, against Ireland at Twickenham in 12 days’ time. Either way, England have a gem on their hands. All Jones needs to do is decide when to give him pride of place in the window of his jewellery shop.