AFTER 20 minutes England were winning 16-0 and I had visions of that first World Cup game in Newcastle when the final score ballooned out to 60-6.
Surely that couldn’t happen again!
Fortunately it didn’t and for the final 60 minutes the scores were level at 18-all, which I hope gives us the prospect of a much closer game in the second Test at Headingley.
We shouldn’t underestimate the difficulty of travelling all around the world to a different time zone to play a Rugby League Test match with little preparation.
In the old days of touring teams, the Aussies or Kiwis would stack up plenty of games against club sides to acclimatise and blow away the cobwebs before playing the first Test five or six weeks later. But in the modern world, that option is no longer available, so the home side goes into the first Test with a significant advantage.
But as we saw two years ago that advantage doesn’t last and the Samoans are perfectly capable of recovering their poise and should not be written off for the second Test.
But neither should we underestimate England’s performance.
Shaun Wane’s men gave a dominant display, largely bossing the middle of the field, with their captain George Williams a constant menace to the Samoan defence and his halfback partner Harry Smith constantly causing them problems with a finely judged kicking game, with the Samoans rarely being able to put him under any pressure.
Shaun had originally selected a 31-man squad for the series, and he cut that down to 24 before leaving out five players in order to announce his 19-man squad for the game on Friday. The five players left out were Danny Walker, Morgan Smithies, Chris Hill, the suspended Luke Thompson and his Wigan team-mate Liam Marshall.
I suspect that Thompson will be the only one of those five who will come into his 19-man squad this week, although the others can count themselves unlucky to be part of such a strong England group of players. I think Smithies who has been a tremendous tackling machine this season for Canberra Raiders, can feel particularly unfortunate, given the competition for places in the back row.
We saw that point emphasised by the omission of shooting star Junior Nsemba, who was in the 19-man squad but failed to make the matchday cut, while Ben Currie had to be content with being the 18th man.
I was surprised that Nsemba wasn’t selected but after Sunday’s victory he may be left out again, particularly as Shaun will have to drop someone from the squad to make way for Thompson. At this stage I’m not sure who that will be, assuming no players have picked up any knocks from the first game.
I had been hoping for a larger attendance than the 15,137 who turned up for the game and I had hoped for a more boisterous atmosphere. In that regard I harboured a secret hope that Samoa would take the lead and England would be forced to come back from a deficit with the crowd behind them to win the game.
But unfortunately that wasn’t to be and the crowd appeared to decide that they were watching a game whose result was never going to be in doubt.
They politely applauded the England tries, but the only time their applause rose to higher levels was when Mikey Lewis came off the bench on 60 minutes to replace Daryl Clark, and then when Lewis scored a fine try ten minutes later when supporting Dom Young’s dash down the right touchline.
And the volume rose again when Terrell May and Matty Lees came into contact two minutes before the end, when their scuffle appeared to draw in everyone else on the field, although it’s amazing these days how players are disciplined enough to take part in an altercation without anyone throwing a punch.
Referee Liam Moore handled the contretemps with great common sense, advising the two captains that it would be a shame to carry on in a way that might result in a suspension that would prevent anyone from playing at Headingley on Saturday.
The Samoans had an awful lot of trouble defending the ruck, constantly giving away set restarts and I’m certain that they will learn from that prior to this Saturday.
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck was a high-profile recruit for the Samoans, as a former Golden Boot winner when he was with New Zealand, but he had a relatively undistinguished game and I’m certain he will want to make an impact on this series in Saturday’s encounter.
So let’s not write Samoa off. They have the potential to cause us plenty of trouble when they have had another six days to acclimatise.
