England punish 14-man Pumas after horror hit to seal finals spot
England marched into the quarterfinals of the Rugby World Cup with a 39-10 victory over an Argentina team reduced to 14 men for more than an hour after Tomas Lavanini was shown a red card.
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England secured their place in the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals with a crushing 39-10 victory over Argentina as the Pumas were forced to play for 63 minutes with 14 men after lock Tomas Lavanini was sent off for smashing his shoulderinto Owen Farrell’s head.
England were 5-3 up at the time after a Jonny May try and though the Pumas battled valiantly for a while, they were eventually overwhelmedas Elliot Daly, Ben Youngs, George Ford, Jack Nowell and Luke Cowan-Dickie all scored, making most of the second half a cruisein Tokyo on Saturday
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The victory earns England, who were eliminated from the pool phase when they hosted the tournament four years ago, a quarter-final, probably against Australia or Wales, and they can secure top place in Pool C by beating France next weekend.
Coach Eddie Jones will be delighted with what was, other than the opening exchanges, a dominant display, and though the red card clearly swung the momentum hugely in their favour, they showed a growing combination of power and pace that has made them real contenders to lift the trophy for the second time.
“We’re exactly where we wanted to be -- we’re 15 points after three games,” Jones said.
“With them having one (player) off we were probably just trying to push the game a little bit too much and we were a bit rustytoo after two easy games and a long break.”
Argentina need France to slip up twice to have any chance of going through. Saturday’s defeat was their 10th in a row against England and they have lost 29 of their last 34 games - a shocking decline for a team who were semi-finalists in two of the previous three tournaments.
They looked sharp enough early on at a rocking Tokyo Stadium having promised to play with fire, and England needed try-saving tackles by Daly and Anthony Watson to keep Matias Moroni and Santiago Carreras out and were fortunate to concede only an early penalty scored by Benjamin Urdapilleta.
England regrouped and got on the scoreboard in the ninth minute after an impressive rolling maul took them into the danger zone and May sprinted over. Argentina’s hopes were dealt a fatal blow after 17 minutes when Lavanini became the latest player to fall foul of the game’s new high tackle directive when he was sent off for smashing his shoulder into the jaw of Farrell.
The incident was missed by referee Nigel Owens but he had no real option once he entered into discussion with the TMO.
The Pumas might have then felt a little hard done by when Manu Tuilagi was lucky not to be yellow-carded for tackling Emiliano Boffelli in the air. The pressure eventually paid off after 36 minutes when England’s forwards were camped on the line for numerous phases before Ford spun the ball wide left for Daly to catch, juggle, then scuttle over.
The forwards repeated the trick after the first-half gong had sounded, creating space for Youngs to dart through.
Up 15-3 at halftime, England secured a bonus point five minutes into the second half when powerful charges by Sam Underhill, Tuilagi and Lewis Ludlam made space for Ford to cross.