England 33-30 Wales: Dramatic end on a confusing day in the Six Nations

A chaotic game on a confusing day in an exceedingly messy championship.

For everything that made sense at Twickenham on a grey Saturday afternoon, there was something that didn't .

England comfortable winners but only three points in it. Hand sanitizer on tables around the ground and hugs and shared drinks everywhere you looked. Wales scoring a record-breaking number of points in south-west London yet leaving jam-packed with regrets.

No-one quite knows how this Five Nations will end because no-one is bound if it ever will. It seems strange talking of isolation and containment in an exceedingly sport where men from different countries routinely go cheek by jowl and jowl to backside, but even a tournament as cherished and ancient as this fades into the background when there's the crisis in the world .

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And so England may leave the championship much as they went into it, as a team with the ability and intensity to require apart almost any other, who play at their best once they establish a lead instead of once they are chasing, with a head coach who is magnanimous in defeat and seemingly angrier in victory.

Eddie Jones had his line ready afterward and he let it move to television, radio and therefore the written media. in the end, he made it clear, when England had Ellis Genge within the sin-bin and Manu Tuilagi sent off, it had been 13 men against 16.

Sixteen, Eddie? "You work that one out."

England beat Wales 33-30 despite Manu Tuilagi red card

England's victory over Wales as it happened

That is Jones, and this is often England. Snarling, unapologetic, intimidatory.

They had less possession than Wales, 36% to 64%. They made fewer meters and quite twice as many tackles. They missed 25 of them to Wales' 13. None of it mattered because they'd a lead of 14 points just before half-time and 17 going into the last five minutes.

When it clicks they'll look irresistible, all big hits and speed and sustained fury. they have a captain in Owen Farrell who relishes standing astride the road between aggression and recklessness. Inside him could be a fly-half and friend in George Ford who can slow the sport down when everyone else is fast-forwarding to select little passes and find almost imperceptible gaps. Inside again on Saturday was a scrum-half in Ben Youngs who ran and sniped just like the kid who thrilled at the start of his career 90 caps ago instead of the cautious veteran of recent vintage.

It was mayhem at the top when Tuilagi trudged off and Dan Biggar and Justin Tipuric ran in, hands-on mouths in the stands all around on each day when Twickenham witnessed elbow-bumps for the first time.

England persisted then and they created their own anarchy within the half with the wrecking-ball challenges of Tom Curry and Tuilagi and therefore the spoiling and stealing of their team-mates in the second row and on the flanks. Maro Itoje could be the smoothest burglar since Danny Ocean, the long arms of the Lawes next to him the right complement.

Just as a fortnight ago against Ireland, they accelerated into a lead by being more ruthless closer to the try-line than the opposition and held it by picking off penalties during a last half where they were content to be contender.

Across their last eight games at home, they need compiled a cumulative 181 first-half points for and only 48 against. Start well and that they finish.

And so Wales scored one in every of the nice tries this stadium has seen, a length-of-the-field wonder almost to match that of Philippe Saint-Andre 29 years ago, and still fell to as a 3rd successive Five Nations defeat for the primary time since 2007.

If that was harsh on Tipuric, who finished off that score additionally to the one at the death, also as Nick Tompkins, who began the attack from his own five-meter line, there was also little for Wayne Pivac to argue about afterward but his opposite number's view on the Tuilagi red card.

"I thought it absolutely was the right decision," he said, with the calmness that only a Kiwi former policeman could bring.

He did blame together with his own team's discipline, bemoaning the breakdown penalty that cost all that momentum gathered by Tipuric's glorious canter, the scrum penalty that followed shortly then allowed England to regain a sense of control that had been slipping away.

Wales's victories here within the past 15 years have all had something wonderfully impossible about them, from the comeback in 2008 in Warren Gatland's first game answerable to Scott Williams' robbery of Lawes in 2012 then the most famous heist of beat the planet Cup three years later.

But that's not the sole thanks to win, and it's not the tactic that the chances favor. there's romance in coming from the brink but there's little logic. Wales required a ruthlessness within the half to match the journey of the second, then Pivac still waits for the lift-off that Gatland managed to call down in his own debut campaign.

Wales can plan for Scotland during a week's time. England must wait to ascertain where their next game comes - maybe against Italy if an already packed calendar are often jemmied open, more likely in Japan this summer but by no means certain.

Their evolution may already have begun. Loyal assistant coach Steve Borthwick is finally unshackling himself from Jones. George Kruis looks to be waving goodbye. Joe Marler could also be another observing England within the rear-view mirror, whilst social media is obsessing over the way he tickled the flamboyant of Alun Wyn Jones.

That has been the character of this six nations. Downpours and doubts, new coaches and old animosities, an shake the concerns of the wider world until it became another victim of that too.

A populist carnival that perhaps disappearing behind a paywall, a sport that has never been more punishing to play still producing moments of sublime sporting poetry. Certainties in some places, suspicion, and misgivings elsewhere.