They hushed Imanol Harinordoquy who was so immense at the Stade de France and so chirpy in the build up to their game

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They hushed Imanol Harinordoquy, who was so immense at the Stade de France and so chirpy in the build up to their game They made Betsen almost anonymous They contained the speed of Vincent Clerc. The loss of a potentially brilliant young sportsman, so unexpectedly, had to touch everyone's perspective.England got the job done. Already capped twice at the age of 21, Duncombe's death from a suspected attack of meningitis was reported to the team on the eve of the game and it surely made a huge intrusion into the tunnel all top-class sportsman make for themselves in the build-up to a major challenge.Duncombe's club-mate Jason Leonard, who was supposed to be celebrating his 100th cap, was particularly distressed – and the hamstring tweak which took him out of the game before half-time, normally a catastrophe to rank with a pub running out of beer, was no doubt seen as a relative small inconvenience of the spirit. There could thus be no legitimate challenge to his conclusion that, "it all the circumstances, it was a good win".The cruelly random death of Nick Duncombe on a training trip with Harlequins in Lanzarote was plainly the most oppressive of those circumstances. Chief among them, as it always must be in any team that seeks to beat the world, is a rough dismissal of the possibility of losing. It couldn't be that because of the intensity of will and execution that came in the long and withering English statement that opened the second half, during which the French were quite simply expelled from the match – a reality that wasn't truly threatened even by the late aggression whipped up by substitute Thomas Castaign? and the tries of the superb full-back Clement Poitrenaud and Traille.Winning ugly isn't in the plan of most coaches – and Woodward is no exception, but when it happens he can congratulate himself on creating some basic values.

The New Zealand official, who gave England everything and France hardly the time of day, probably shouldn't bother searching his mail for the ribbon of the Legion d'Honour.The England centre Will Greenwood said they had produced a "load of rubbish." It wasn't true. Johnson looked mildly chastened and the French could only shrug and speculate on what the referee might have done had one of their own number wielded such a big, blatant right hand. They won ugly, and this would have been so even if their captain Martin Johnson – not without provocation from Fabien Pelous who seemed to be impersonating a combine harvester – hadn't launched himself into a punching rampage remarkable even by his own brutal standards.There is nothing new to say about the dark side of Johnson, who otherwise performed with his usual authority, nor the appalling acquiescence of the official reaction to his outrages.The referee Paul Honiss, despite a thorough briefing from a touch judge, gave him no more than a brief lecture. Against the French they discovered a fourth – and it is maybe the most important way of all. When that happened you were reminded quite what England had beaten – and out of sight when it mattered most.In the autumn series against the southern hemisphere, England found three different ways to win. There it all was, movement and vision and and hands so soft they might have been playing a concert piano.

The ball flowed thrillingly among the French in a move which involved the wing Aurelien Rougerie, the centres Damien Traille and Xavier Garbajosa and, for once, Serge Betsen. Another is to say they simply trampled on opponents who have a unique capacity to unleash wonderful natural brilliance, a reminder of which came when the issue was just about dead. "If you go quiet for a while," he said, "the French can get very noisy."Fortunately, perhaps inevitably, his boot served well enough as a Noise Abatement Society and in the end the reason for English victory was plain enough.At the decisive phase of the match they displayed a superior will That, anyway, is one way of putting it. Jonny Wilkinson, the scoring machine, was downcast that the French had not been punished more thoroughly for the discomfort they caused at the Stade de France last year. But they still made a battle of it, an extremely decent one, and what happened for about 20 minutes after the interval confirmed that growing impression of this England team; they are head and shoulders above most of the rest of our sporting life.This holds good whether they win or lose the World Cup in Australia at the end of the year They are a serious team They set themselves the highest standards.

You have to note the special category of teams who shoot for the heavens and sometimes miss, and this, when you make the most casual appraisal of British sport, when you think of what happens so regularly on the football and cricket fields and the tennis courts, is what lifts Clive Woodward's England so far above the tide of mediocrity.There was a touch of lead in English boots and the French were at their most spasmodic. No, it wasn't one of those England-France games that take you so far out of yourself the air tastes like good crisp Burgundy. Sometimes though, you need to check yourself, and weigh up what you have before you. A man, aged 21 in peak physical condition, suddenly to have this illness and die is quite unbelievable and it has been hard for the players to understand.". As a club we are not going to get over this for a long time."Richard Hill, the England back rower, said: "Nick's death was a huge shock to the team. A particularly virulent infection can kill within a couple of hours without prompt treatment."Everyone is devastated," Scott said "He was hugely talented and a lovely guy. His father, Steven, said that meningitis was the one thing the hospital tests had ruled out."According to a medical source the likeliest cause of death, given those symptoms, is meningococcal septicaemia – blood poisoning.