WHEN THE Tote jackpot, worth nearly pounds 700,000, was held over last week from the Cheltenham Festival to Fakenham on Friday, a nation’s punters went collectively crazy. Replacements: C Califano (Toulouse) for Marconnet, 47; D Auradou (Stade Francais) for Pelous, 65; M Raynaud (Narbonne) for Lievremont, 65.Referee: C Hawke (New Zealand; J Fleming, Scotland).. It is not always possible to set the blue touchpaper alight with a single match.ENGLAND: M Perry (Bath); D Rees (Sale), J Guscott (Bath), J Wilkinson (Newcastle), D Luger (Harlequins); M Catt (Bath), K Bracken (Saracens); J Leonard (Harlequins), R Cockerill (Leicester), D Garforth (Leicester), M Johnson (Leicester), T Rodber (Northampton), R Hill (Saracens), L Dallaglio (Wasps, capt), N Back (Leicester).Replacements: M Dawson (Northampton) for Bracken, 34; M Corry (Leicester) for Hill, 49; N Beal (Northampton) for Rees, 63; V Ubogu (Bath) for Garforth, 78.FRANCE: E Ntamack (Toulouse); X Garbajosa (Toulouse), P Giordani (Dax), F Comba (Stade Francais), C Dominici (Stade Francais); T Castaignede (Castres), P Carbonneau (Brive); S Marconnet (Stade Francais), R Ibanez (Perpignan, capt), F Tournaire (Toulouse), O Brouzet (Begles-Bordeaux), F Pelous (Toulouse), T Lievremont (Perpignan), C Juillet (Stade Francais), R Castel (Beziers). As it was, too many of the big French names – Ibanez, Pelous, Carbonneau, even Ntamack – remained stuck on the launch pad. The outside-half from Castres gave his heart and soul to the occasion, which was more than could be said for some of his forwards, and his honesty in tackling and turning every last member of the England pack was no less remarkable than the accuracy of his line-kicking or the boundless imagination he brought to his attacking game.Who knows? Had Perry not forced Garbajosa to slide a foot into touch a mere nanosecond before touching the ball down at the right corner flag during the visitors’ lone purple patch before the interval, Castaignede might have taken the rest of his side with him into the stratosphere.

Thomas Castaignede, whose potential meeting with Scotland’s Gregor Townsend in Paris in three weeks’ time should leave every rugby connoisseur in Europe in a state of exquisite expectation, spent virtually the whole 80 minutes on the back foot yet still managed to play like some bleach-blond Barry John. One of these fine days, England will be made to pay for their carelessness.Suffice to say that the French would not have thrown away such chances like so much confetti. Mike Catt’s extraordinary decision to ignore an entire battalion of support in favour of a home run of his own was the most cringingly embarrassing moment of the championship to date – Clive Woodward’s expression was positively Gorgonesque – while Jeremy Guscott should have finished in the left corner after Catt’s diagonal kick, Luger’s clever impersonation of a line-out jumper and Perry’s instantaneous flick inside had unlocked the door. If good teams convert pressure into three-point opportunities, there was something state of the art about England at the weekend.Mind you, they also invented new ways of not scoring. By contrast, Dallaglio and company were penalised just nine times in 80 minutes and committed only three of those offences on their own doorstep.

While Dan Luger and David Rees, now sadly departed for a six-week spell of intensive physiotherapy on a badly sprained ankle, undoubtedly craved more of the ball during the second half, England were in no hurry to apologise for winning a very loseable match in precisely the same way that great All Black teams have prevailed since Noah was in short pants.They squeezed the French so hard – not so much in the scrummage, where Sylvain Marconnet and Franck Tournaire dominated the grunt-and-groan contest before the break, but pretty well everywhere else – that the visitors conceded 20 penalties, 14 of them in their own half. They had not disappeared from French view in the grand manner, far from it; every last one of their points were registered via the left boot of Jonny Wilkinson and given that all but one of his record-equalling seven penalties were fairly workaday in terms of angles and distances, the teenager’s feat was not of the same magnitude as that of Simon Hodgkinson, whose marksmanship at a wind-buffeted Parc des Princes nine years retains pride of place in the goal-kicking pantheon.But Lawrence Dallaglio’s methodically prepared and sharply focused side are now laying down all kinds of markers for this autumn’s World Cup. The thing now is to take the good things out of the game and prepare for the Grand Slam match with Wales, who have some creative runners of their own.”By the time Franck Comba pocketed Philippe Carbonneau’s awkward diagonal chip and slipped away from the wrong-footed Perry, England were out of sight. The late try was a disappointment, yes, but I’m not going to cry about it; no defence is watertight against a speculative kick ahead, especially when you get a wicked bounce. At times, they put together a dozen passes and still couldn’t break out of their own 22.