Woodward Delighted With ‘The Best Rugby’

English coach Clive Woodward was understandably delighted with what he termed ‘the best rugby he has ever seen in Twickenham’. Speaking immediately after England’s 45-11 demolition of Ireland Woodward (pictured) said, “Some of the rugby played in the first 50 minutes was the best I have ever seen in Twickenham, certainly the best since I’ve been in charge and that’s fifty games, so yes, I’m delighted. We went off the boil in the final quarter but I’m not going to comment on that. We’ve ripped them to pieces in the first half, Jonny Wilkinson, his footwork has ripped them apart. I had no doubt we we were going to win this game, no doubt at all but I was very pleasantly at the manner in which we did, some of the tries were just wonderful.”

And naturall, his counterpart Eddie O’Sullivan expressed his disappointment, ” We lost the plot totally in the first half, our lineout didn’t fire and we gave them too much space. You just can’t do that with a team like this. I knew that if they got that sort of space we ‘d be in trouble. We have some way to go with our defence, we were badly caught out at times. But on a positive note after a very shaky start to the second half we battened down the hatches and put in a good final quarter. We’ll take heart from that, learn what we have to learn and concentrate on the next game which is against Scotland.” O’Sullivan when asked about England’s current ranking as number 1 in the world said, ” I’d agree with that, that’s where I’d put them. I can’t see anyone beating them.”