Twickenham: France, the reigning Six Nations champions, inflicted a devastating blow on England with their heaviest defeat in history, with a stunning 53-10 win at Twickenham on Saturday.
An utterly dominant France did not end England’s long-held title hopes at Twickenham by making it seven tries after their 18-year wait for Six Nations success.
England trailed 27-3 at half-time — their biggest ever deficit at Twickenham — and things went from bad to worse for the hosts as they suffered their second defeat in four games under coach Steve Borthwick.
France’s Thibault Flament, Charles Olyon and Damien Penaud crossed the England line twice as Thomas Ramos, who scored 23 points in total, stepped up for the opening five-pointer.
The 43-point margin increased from the 35-point margin England lost 42-6 to South Africa at Twickenham in 2008.
It was England’s third worst defeat anywhere after the 76-0 thrashing by Australia in Brisbane in 1998 and the 2007-58-10 reverse against the Springboks in Bloemfontein.
The victory gave World Cup hosts France their biggest margin of victory over England, surpassing the 25-point margin achieved in both the 1972 37-12 victory and the 2006 31-6 triumph.
Both of those victories came in Paris, while France’s previous biggest victory came by just eight points in an 11-3 victory over England at Twickenham in 1951.
France’s win on Saturday was all the more impressive because of the rain in south-west London.
And it kept their hopes of a successful title defense alive after a second-round defeat by Grand Slam-chasing Ireland ended Les Bleus’ 14-match winning streak against all opponents.
’emotional’
“I’ve been coming to Twickenham for 20 years. I feel it. It’s emotional… for us, it means we’re real,” France coach Fabian Galathy said through tears.
France captain Antoine Dupont added: “I think when you look at the scoreboard we’re finding it difficult to understand. 53-10 at Twickenham in the base of rugby. It will be historic.”
By contrast, Borthwick admitted: “There’s a gap, a big gap, between us and the best teams in the world,” adding new captain Alice Genge: “I’m not going to sugarcoat it. They’re one of our worst teams. One is the performance.
Pre-match preparation was dominated by Borthwick dropping captain Owen Farrell to the bench and starting Marcus Smith at fly-half, now led by prop Gunge for the first time.
But before Smith or Genge could have any impact on the match, France were 10-0 up after just five minutes.
Thriving on early turnover ball, France needed just two minutes to score with a fine effort.
Back row Olivone and Locke Flement opened up England’s defense with two excellent offloads.
Left-back Ethan Dumortier continued the attack with a surging run before releasing Ramos for the full-back’s third try of the tournament.
Ramos converted his own score and added a penalty soon after.
France are a much more settled team than England, who were playing just their fourth match since Borthwick replaced the sacked Eddie Jones, and it showed as Les Bleus won back-to-back turnovers.
Les Bleus extended their lead in the 26th minute after a brilliant left-footed 50-22 kick from scrum-half DuPont resulted in Filament heading over from close range.
England eventually scored through Smith’s penalty only for Ramos to reply.
And on the stroke of half-time, France scored a third try.
The platform came from a solid scrum, in which No.8 Gregory Aldert released Olion, who headed over the line.
England finally managed a try when substitute scrum-half Alex Mitchell released full-back Freddie Steward.
By now Borthwick had made several changes, with Farrell replacing Henry Slade at centre-back.
But it didn’t matter, the bounce of DuPont’s chip-kick beat the England defense but fell kindly for Flement as he scored a 57th-minute try.
And three minutes later, as France crossed England’s line for the fifth time, Olyon ordered the ball grounded after a lengthy review.
Despite the driving rain, Ramos drilled the conversion and Wing Pinaud had time to add two more tries.
