Marcus Smith hints at electric future but inexperience costs England dear

Last time England made the trip to this stadium was back in February 2020, their last away game before the world turned upside down. That was a tight, miserly game on a miserable wet, grey and windy day, and there were long stretches here when it felt as if they had picked the contest up right where they’d left it before the pandemic.

The biggest difference was in the England team. Only five of this starting XV had been in that one: Elliot Daly, Tom Curry, Lewis Ludlam, Maro Itoje and Kyle Sinckler. One of them, Daly, was playing in a different position while another, Ludlam, was making his first start since that previous encounter.

It was the greenest team Jones has put out in the Six Nations, with a new backline and a new captain in Curry. You could see it, too, in the telling moments. They looked and played like a work in progress.

Curry kept a can of Red Bull by the posts during his warmup, and kept swigging from it right up to the final minutes of the match. Whatever he did with the energy, he didn’t waste it on his team talk in the huddle, which ran to a scant mouthful of words. They do say he is a man who leads by his actions. And there were plenty of those: in the first half Curry carried the ball more than anyone – seven times – but he only made 11 metres. It was dirty work because he was bogged down in a muddy battle with his opposite number, the devilish Hamish Watson, who seemed to be there in front of Curry every time he lifted his eyes.

Curry’s play rather summed up his side’s in that first half. England controlled the possession and the territory in those first 40 minutes; they dominated both, in fact. But they weren’t able to do anything too much with either of them.

There were moments when they came