England Saxons 51 - 3 USA

England Saxons’ opened their Barclays Churchill Cup account with a promising all round performance that saw them outwit and outmuscle their North American opponents.  

As well as giving encouragement to coaches Jim Mallinder and Dorian West, their performance will be well received by England head coach Brian Ashton, whose senior team will face the same US Eagles team in their opening Rugby World Cup match this September.

It wasn’t all good news for Ashton, however, as World Cup hopeful Shane Geraghty left the field in the first half after suffering a reoccurrence of the hamstring injury that kept him out of the senior touring squad.

Said Mallinder, “Considering we’ve only been together a week, that was a very pleasing performance. We had a lot of new players too, so we’re delighted to have scored 50-plus points. But we’ve still got plenty to work on – we were far too inaccurate at times. We were playing into the wind in the first half so the players made the decision to go for it rather than take the easy points, and we supported them 100%.”. Shane suffered a strained hamstring. It’s not as a bad as when he did it the first time but we decided to pull him off as a precaution anyway.”

England and Gloucester fly half, Ryan Lamb celebrated his 21st birthday with a man of the match for his all round performance but promised to share his champagne with his forward pack. “Tonight was a massive forward effort, the front five were amazing and the pack gave us a great platform. We had some fast runners in the backline so just tried to get the ball to them,” he said.

As well as providing plenty of grunt up front, England’s forwards were impressive in defence and unstoppable in the drive. Despite going by three points after 10 minutes, England replied with a try through London Irish wing Topsy Ojo, which resulted from a brilliant restart take by Quins’ flanker Will Skinner. Lamb converted before turn down two further kicks at goal, opting instead for the lineout. His ambition was rewarded when, as the half hour approached, number 8 Jordan Crane capitalised on a driven scrum to crash over for his team’s second try before adding another on the stroke of half time in almost identical fashion. With Delon Armitage’s converted try sandwiched in between, England went into the break with a commanding 24-3 lead.

In the second half, Phil Dowson, who will next season captain Newcastle Falcons, took over as skipper as Neal Hatley took a well earned rest. Although England added a try after five minutes when Quins’ lock Jim Evans crashed over, the Eagles refused to lie down, keeping the Saxons at bay for a significant period with some fine play of their own.

But the try of the match came at the turn of the final quarter when birthday boy Lamb broke through the defence. When the ball popped out of the resulting ruck, Jordan Crane was on hand to carry another 10 yards before chipping the ball through for Delon Armitage to dive over.

Despite going a man down when they lost replacement flanker Ben Woods to the sin bin after only five minutes on the pitch, further tries followed for replacement prop, Jack Forster, Phil Dowson and replacement scrum half Lee Dickson, who crossed in the closing minutes to take the final tally over the half century.

England Saxons’ next game is against Scotland A at Twickenham on bank holiday Monday, 28 May, kick off 3pm. When the second round of pool games is completed, the teams will be ranked with the top two competing in the Cup Final, the third and fourth placed teams playing in the Plate Final and the bottom two contesting the Bowl Final.

All three finals will take place at Twickenham on Saturday 2 June. Tickets for all these games are available from Ticketmaster on 0870 902 0000 or from www.ticketmaster.co.uk.

England Saxons: 15 Delon Armitage (London Irish), 14 Dan Scarbrough (Saracens), 13 Kevin Sorrell (Saracens), 12 Shane Geraghty (London Irish), rep by 22 Nils Mordt (London Irish) 32mins, 11 Topsy Ojo (London Irish), 10 Ryan Lamb (Gloucester Rugby), 9 Richard Wigglesworth (Sale Sharks) rep by 21 Lee Dickson (Newcastle Falcons) 64mins, 1 Neal Hatley (London Irish, captain), rep by 18 Tom Mercey (Saracens) 38mins, 2 David Paice (London Irish) rep by 16 Matt Thompson (Newcastle Falcons) 64mins, 3 John Brooks (Northampton Saints) rep by 17 Jack Forster (Gloucester Rugby) 60mins, 4 Richard Blaze (Worcester Warriors) rep by 19 Nick Kennedy (London Irish), 73mins, 5 Jim Evans (NEC Harlequins), 6 Phil Dowson (Newcastle Falcons), 7 Will Skinner (NEC Harlequins) rep by 20 Ben Woods (Newcastle Falcons) 60mins (sin bin 62-72), 8 Jordan Crane (Leicester Tigers)

USA: 15 Francois Viljoen (Belmont Shore, Captain), 14 Chris Wyles (Northhampton), 13 Albert Tuipulotu (San Mateo), 12 Vaha Esikia (San Mateo), 11 Mike Palefau (Narbonne Rugby Club) rep by 22 David Williams (Denver Barbarians) 71mins , 10 Valenese Malifa (Belmont Shore), 9 Kimball Kjar (Park City), 1 Mike French (OMBAC), 2 Mark Crick (PAC) rep by 16 Blake Burdette (NYAC) 40mins, 3 John Vitale (Chicago Lions) rep by 17 Chris Osentowski (Belmont Shore) 40mins, 4 Hayden Mexted (St. Louis), 5 Mike Mangan (Denver Barbarians), 6 Louis Stanfill (UC - Berkeley), 7 Todd Clever (OMBAC) rep by 18 Ben Wiedemer (Belmont Shore) 70mins, 8 Pat Quinn (Denver Barbarians) rep by 19 Tasi Mounga (SF Golden Gate) 46mins

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