Oh boy... that's the best yet from Lancaster's young guns

By Martin Samuel - Sport for the Daily Mail

Published: 17:30 EST, 9 March 2014 | Updated: 19:50 EST, 9 March 2014

‘Boyhood,’ wrote PG Wodehouse, ‘is one of those complaints that a man should catch young and have done with. Like measles, when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.’

To the obvious delight of their coach, Stuart Lancaster, his England team have cast off their boyhood, their teenage spots, just in time.

Warren Gatland will not be allowed to forget his men against boys jibe in a hurry following this, the most significant victory of Lancaster’s reign. Gatland, cocksure having measured both groups of players in his role as Lions coach, compared Wales’s grown-ups with England’s adolescents prior to the game and was then witness to a very humbling coming of age.

Cocksure: Wales' performance did not live up to Gatland's pre-match comments

Smiles better: England head coach Stuart Lancaster reflects on a job well done

It is not often one gets to write this about an English sports team in a crucial contest, but the result was never in doubt.

No, it was far from perfect. England led by just five points at half-time having dominated the play, and with the magnificent Leigh Halfpenny kicking for Wales, that is hardly a commanding position.

Yet the two teams were unrecognisable from the contest in Cardiff last season, the match that no doubt gave Gatland his overweening sense of confidence. England looked like boys that day, but in a year men have arrived.

Even the youngest members of the team played with the courage of older competitors, Jack Nowell and Jonny May rightly drawing praise from Lancaster for an impressive mix of combative maturity and the instinctive abandon of youth.

Bright spark: Young Exeter wing Jack Nowell was a standout performer

Instinctive: Gloucester wing Jonny May also impressed on the opposite flank to May

It can be like a high-wire act to watch this England at times, but the atmosphere at Twickenham is all the better for it. These fans hope to be in at the ground floor of something truly special. Maybe they are.

So, how does this compare to the other highlights of the Lancaster era. Better than beating the All Blacks? By a mile. Little wonders can happen in the autumn internationals. Teams can arrive jaded, in flux, exhausted, or be taken by surprise. An 11-point win over Wales, a Triple Crown, is harder to fluke.

Nobody considered Lancaster’s England the genuine equal of New Zealand after their victory here in 2012. They were at the earliest stages of a work in progress.

The 38-21 score was heartening — bordering on unbelievable, really, considering the All-Blacks were 20 games unbeaten — but few were under any illusions that is was a special day, with much hard work ahead.

Shock: England's 38-21 win over New Zealand in December 2012 felt less significant

Sunday’s win was different, because it came from the solid foundation of steady progress. This did not feel like a defiance of reason. England defeated Wales because Lancaster has been fashioning a fine young team, blended with steadying experience from players like Courtney Lawes and Chris Robshaw, and after much experimentation has alighted on a formula that works.

England won because Owen Farrell is second to none as a kicker these days, even a match for Halfpenny. England won because Danny Care, focused, is as good as any scrum-half in the world. England won because they should have beaten France in Paris, and did beat Ireland at Twickenham, and this result was consistent with their level of performance throughout the competition.

Considering what lies ahead, it was also a huge, landmark statement by an England team with an eye on the World Cup, a giant stride taken, a point proved. If England are to be one of the two teams to make it out of a World Cup group that also includes Australia, they may have to defeat Wales at Twickenham. This result showed that could be done.

Creative forces: Danny Care (left) and Owen Farrell (right) helped England dominate the game

The last 6 Nations match between these teams was in Cardiff, and the next one, too, on February 6 next year. England will therefore not play Wales again at Twickenham before their World Cup Pool A meeting on September 26, 2015. If they were going to prove Gatland’s team could be vanquished at Twickenham, here was a last chance saloon.

Lancaster acknowledged as much. ‘The boys wanted to win against Wales in this stadium,’ he said, ‘and I’m delighted they did.’

It was a psychological milestone for Lancaster’s England, particularly after the torment of last season’s defeat in Cardiff.

Payback? Well, not really. Wales are too good to lose by close to 30 points, as England did that day, and there was not the same sense of shock that greeted the previous scoreline. Yet Wales were still considered favourites on Sunday if both teams played to potential, so to be reduced to a kicking game for long periods — and kicking to Mike Brown, too, one of the best counter-attackers in world rugby — while England ran the ball, and well, was a huge achievement.

Distant memory: England reflect after last year's 30-3 defeat at the Millennium Stadium

It is Lancaster’s triumph that England play without fear; enterprising, imaginative, cavalier, almost too much at times. Lancaster had a little moan about playing rugby in dangerous areas, but he did so with a half-smile. He knows this is all part of youthful enthusiasm and his team have more than a year of growing before their first World Cup fixture on September 18.

Perhaps the great regret is the final 15 minutes in Paris in which England surrendered a winning position. Hold that, and Lancaster’s team could have been looking at a Grand Slam a year ahead of Sir Clive Woodward’s schedule — his team only won it in 2003, the same year as the World Cup.

There is even a strong possibility that, for all this wonderful improvement, England will not even collect the 2014 RBS 6 Nations Championship as a win for Ireland over France in Paris would mean England need to beat Italy by a landslide in Rome.

Crowning glory: Captain Chris Robshaw holds aloft the Triple Crown trophy

Yet, disappointing though it may be, Lancaster will live with whatever outcome Saturday’s final round of games brings. The first Triple Crown for England since 2003 is not to be sniffed at, and neither is the sight that made it happen. Boys to men, before his eyes. It was what he had hoped to see when this tournament began, what he has been planning since taking the job.

There are many more stages in the forging of potential World Cup  winners — the southern hemisphere successfully engaged, the Championship won, a Grand Slam next season — but for now a simple maturing process will do. England’s players had to show Lancaster they were all grown up. Now it is time for those boys to get to work.

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