Six Nations England vs France: Red rose have unfortunate habit of letting Grand Slams slip

When the big prize is up for grabs, red rose country have an ugly record... more often than not

(Getty Images)

History? It’s just one damned thing after another – with heavy emphasis on the word “damned”, especially when it comes to the England rugby union team and their Grand Slam adventures. There have been a dozen red-rose Slams down the decades, but half of them were delivered before the outbreak of the Second World War and another five pre-dated the transformative shift to professionalism.

Since the old Five Nations became Six with Italy’s admission in 2000, there has been only one English clean sweep: in 2003, a year of years if ever there was one. If supporters remember every last detail of that magisterial denouement in Dublin, they cannot forget the blows to the spirit inflicted by the Celtic nations on four other occasions when a Slam has been up for grabs.

THE FAILURES...

Scotland 19 England 13 - Edinburgh, 2 April 2000

Clive Woodward, a mere man of the people rather than a knight of the realm, was never entirely comfortable on his travels north of the border. Events here confirmed him in his prejudice. England’s attacking game, designed and patented by the visionary Brian Ashton, had been something to behold for much of the tournament – six tries against Ireland, five against Wales, eight against Italy – but the wheels parted company with the sweet chariot on a miserable day at Murrayfield.

It was a long way short of Woodward’s finest hour for a variety of reasons. The coach did not endear himself to the locals in the build-up – as the Scottish loose-head prop Tom Smith recalled recently, “he’d done quite a good job of irritating everybody as only he knew how” – and he made an error in selection by deciding against restoring Martin Johnson to the engine room of the scrum after the great lock’s return to fitness. Some of England’s wet-weather tactics were bone-headed in the extreme and they topped things off by spitting in the face of protocol, with the Princess Royal left holding a Six Nations trophy no one could be bothered to collect.

Four years later, following a comprehensive 35-13 victory in the Scottish capital, the coach was still fuming about life beyond the wall. “England get the kitchen sink thrown at them when they step out of line over protocol, yet I had to go down from my seat in the stand before today’s game began to see where the Scots had got to,” he spluttered. “I was almost knocked over by bagpipers coming on to the pitch. It was choreographed to keep us waiting. They seem to take great delight in trying to mess England around.” He was right about that much, at least.

Ireland 20 England 14 - Dublin, 20 October 2001

An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease played havoc with the tournament scheduling. England had been in even more devastating form than a year previously – the 43 points they put past the Scots at Twickenham, a handsome tally by any standards, was nothing special by their 2001 standards – but by the time the big guns returned from the burningly intense Lions tour of Australia and headed across the Irish Sea, the momentum had disappeared.

So had the red-rose brain cells. As Keith Wood, the grand old green-shirted hooker who had just played alongside half the English pack against the Wallabies, subsequently told it: “There was something about their line-out calls that was familiar to me. I recognised them during the game but couldn’t figure out from where. Then Malcolm O’Kelly [the Irish lock] came over and said: ‘Woody, they’re using the Lions calls from the summer.’ I said: ‘Ah, there you go.’”

Ireland made a horrible mess of the England line-out operation that day – Wood scored an important try direct from one of his own throws – and the visitors, who for reasons best known to themselves had chosen to dispense with the defensive security of the ultra-dependable Matt Perry at full-back, did not begin to make sense of their surroundings. They gave themselves a shot at redemption with a late score from Austin Healey, but an English victory would have been a travesty of justice.

Ireland 24 England 8 - Dublin, 19 March 2011

Tom Wood, the Northampton flanker new to the England side, said it was like having his heart ripped out. Nick Easter, a more seasoned international back-rower, came to suspect that the damage caused by this St Patrick’s weekend defeat lay at the root of the World Cup failure in New Zealand later in the year. Whatever the truth of it, Martin Johnson’s side took a beating – particularly in the opening half, which ended with the visitors 14 points adrift.

Tommy Bowe and Brian O’Driscoll, two Lions-class backs, scored the Irish tries and while the World Cup-winning hooker Steve Thompson, back in the red-rose England mix after a career-threatening injury, pilfered a five-pointer midway through the third quarter, it did not add up to a row of beans. The fact that Jonny Wilkinson missed the conversion said all that needed saying about a wretched performance.

And to make matters worse, the players had to hang around in limbo, waiting for the result of the France-Wales game in Paris – a match the visitors had to win by plenty to steal the title, but lost by miles. Not for the first time, England found themselves celebrating a Six Nations title with a collective grimace.

Wales 30 England 3 - Cardiff, 16 March 2013

There are heavy defeats, there are painful reverses and there are complete and utter towellings. None of which adequately describes events at the Millennium Stadium when Wales, motivated to the high heavens by the unconscionable thought of England winning a Slam on Red Dragon soil, set about their nearest and dearest with a vengeance. The chants of “easy” could be heard, in glorious three-part harmony, long before the final whistle.

Contrary to the mythologised version, there were moments when England had a foothold in the game. Unfortunately for them, that foothold was about as secure as a novice climber might establish in bad weather towards the top of K2. For every pumped-up performer in a red shirt – Leigh Halfpenny and Alex Cuthbert, Alun Wyn Jones and Sam Warburton and Justin Tipuric – there was a dumbstruck dead loss in a white one. The scoreboard was not cruel to the visitors. If anything, it let them off lightly.

A couple of days later, Stuart Lancaster and his fellow coaches were still struggling to work out what the hell and why. So they turned their fire on the Antipodean referee Steve Walsh – hardly the best official in the world and certainly not the most popular. Much as the red-rose England supporters would have loved to blame a man too much in love with his own reflection, they knew the problem lay closer to home.

...AND THE ONE SUCCESS

Ireland 6 England 42 - Dublin, 30 March 2003

This may have been the finest England performance of the professional era, although the victory over the Wallabies in Melbourne a couple of months later had a similar sheen about it. The hosts were also in the hunt for a Slam and, with the mighty O’Driscoll in prime form, they quietly fancied their chances. It was a delusion of grandeur.

From the moment Martin Johnson led his players on to the field, stood in the wrong place for the formalities, refused point blank to move an inch and forced the Irish President, Mary McAleese, to walk halfway round the city in her high heels, the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

As one experienced local broadcaster said afterwards: “It was a day for hating the English, and they gave us a really good reason to hate them.”

The tries came thick and fast – Lawrence Dallaglio, Mike Tindall, Dan Luger, Will Greenwood times two – and when the world champions in waiting really hit their straps after half-time, they rattled up 29 points without reply.

Grand Slam victories do not come sweeter. Unfortunately for the world’s best-resourced rugby nation, neither do they come often.