PAUL REES

There is a danger of reading too much into a pre-World Cup friendly between two sides some way below strength, but the charitable view of England’s performance was that arriving in France in peak condition took priority over preparation for yesterday’s match.
England have made great play on how their conditioning, a weakness in the Six Nations when they tended to disappear in the final quarter, would be vastly better come the World Cup, but in Cardiff they were blowing early and when the home side increased the tempo after the break, they disappeared into the distance.
Tom Pearso...