James Lawton: Wilkinson reminds French about art of the possible

(REUTERS)

Those of us who risk being carted off to the Tower for saying Jonny Wilkinson is more about the past than the future have to concede that he can still wield a hell of an influence on the present. No, he is not the future, but then without him here on Saturday night England might well have been plunged back into their own version of the Dark Ages.

Not only did his 14 points – including a world record 29th drop goal – deliver defeat for what turned out to be a seriously under-cooked French revolution, he represented a point of solidity that in the end was utterly decisive.

Under their young coach, Marc Lièvremont, the French invested faith as never before in their native brilliance to run and pass the ball. Wilkinson simply picked them off for being far too negligent of the game's practicalities. It did not make your hair stand on end as some of the home side's work had promised but almost invariably failed to do. However, it was an impressive working guide to the art of the possible.

With the massive help of a relentless back row, in which Nick Easter found much of his old force and Michael Lipman tackled some of his young opponents into a state of quivering adolescence, he kept digging holes for the French. Les Bleus refused to believe that finding a few shovels of their own – it did not help that they played most of the game without a specialist kicker – might have anything to do with the solution to their own problems. They kept wielding rapiers even in the most unpromising circumstances.

They tried to live by the sword but died by the English bludgeon. It has happened so many times and Lièvremont will surely have to review the extent of his commitment to the force but also the indiscretions of youth.

Where this leaves England, though, is much less clear. Few building blocks were visible; only the old sweat's understanding that sometimes a win, just a win, is perfectly self-contained in its value.

They defended superbly, making the vital early point that there would be no easy pickings for France's "divine triangle" of full-back Cédric Heymans and wings Aurélien Rougerie and Vincent Clerc. Jamie Noon's crash tackle on Heymans could not have had more devastating effect as Paul Sackey tapped the spilt ball over the line and dived on to it so easily he might have been Cristiano Ronaldo on a holiday beach.

Yet if England always stayed ahead, looked comfortable in their belief that the French seemed locked into a bout of Gallic hara-kiri and benefited from an extremely poised first start by Richard Wigglesworth at scrum-half, they scarcely illuminated the sky over the north end of Paris. But then that was France's plan, not England's.

England came here to re-instate themselves as a serious force in the game, as they did last autumn when they shattered French World Cup ambitions a few weeks after a show of near mind-boggling bankruptcy against the eventual champions South Africa in a group game in the same stadium.

That triumph over France led only to a final defeat by the Springboks and a thoroughly uninspiring start to this Six Nations campaign. It is not easy to believe that this latest one provokes much optimism for the future.

Certainly the sense of a team strong behind their own barricades, but not with much in the way of invention or obvious growth, had to be all the greater after watching earlier the continued progress of Wales under their new coaching regime of Warren Gatland and Shaun Edwards.

Not only did Wales eviscerate an Italian team that so recently gave the conquerors of France severe problems in Rome, they showed marked improvement on their victories over England and Scotland.

Wales played with a fluency and a freedom that was never betrayed by the naïvety that was implicit in almost everything the French attempted on Saturday night. The Welsh coaches have the huge asset of four world-class half-backs, Saturday's quartet of Dwayne Peel, Michael Phillips, Stephen Jones and James Hook, but they are also able to build on a pack of swiftly developing mobility and discipline.

By comparison, England still seemed rooted in the conservatism of an old guard, a fact which was again underlined by the failure to find a place for Danny Cipriani who – cool judges say – has the potential to emerge as one of the world's great players, certainly when compared to the French tiros François Trinh-Duc, Morgan Parra and Louis Picamoles, who respectively occupied the key half-back positions and No 8 with the uncertainty of boys set against the most unforgiving of men.

With Wilkinson such a key force in a desperately needed victory he has plainly for the moment resisted the challenge of Cipriani, which is something that could not quite be said for Iain Balshaw, especially when he missed one high ball so profoundly he might have been wearing a blindfold. Here, maybe, the England coach, Brian Ashton, may well have the elbow room to bring at least a hint of exciting team development in his selections for the remaining matches against Scotland and Ireland.

The fact is the Cipriani issue is not going to go away because some of the old values of English rugby stood firm here.

This was a victory for pragmatism and strength of character but it would be absolute folly to forget that it was hugely aided by the almost wilful self-destruction of the French. Lièvremont's greatest crime was arrogance. He believed that by taking all restraints off his team's natural instincts, he had created enough self-confidence to sweep away England. It was an insult for which he paid an entirely appropriate price and one that was finally exacted in a way that said everything about his team's performance.

The ball was dropped in front of the posts after one last misguided attempt to destroy the opposition from within their own 22-metre line.

Lièvremont died by his own adventurous hand – and a large potion of hubris. Ashton survived by enforcing some of the basics of the game. Missing was the ideal somewhere in between. Maybe it had been stolen by the Welsh.