England, even in winning, and France provide little to strike fear into later opponents

In all likelihood, England will face France in the Rugby World Cup quarterfinals, with the winner expecting to play either Ireland or Wales.

The Celts will be confident, whoever they face.

England waltzed to a 67-3 win over lowly Romania in Dunedin in today’s early match, scoring ten tries in a match that, on the face of things, should banish most of the bad feeling that has been lingering around the England team. Wingers Chris Ashton and Mark Cueto scored a hat-trick each, and the Oaks barely resisted a much-improved performance from England’s backs, with Manu Tuilagi and Ben Foden also cutting through the blue-shirted defence with ease.

But, despite the marked improvement from Martin Johnson’s men in comparison with the performances against Argentina and Georgia, this victory should not eliminate all the concerns within the English camp. This was not the same Romania side that ran Scotland so close – many of their more solid and experienced players started this game on the bench, resting before their encounter with Georgia, the one match they feel they have a chance of winning.

England also continued to commit silly penalties when it was not required, although, admittedly, the problem was nothing like the scourge that blighted their performances in the earlier pool matches. Judgement on England by their potential knockout opponents should be reserved until they give a dominating performance against a team of far more rugby calibre than Romania. Scotland should provide that challenge when the sides meet next Saturday; until then, there is little reason why Ireland, France and Wales should see England as having made any great progress in the past six days.

England were certainly impressive – but most teams would be in the face of a Romanian side that could not win its own lineout, could not catch and seemed frightened of taking the game to their opponents.

France, on the other hand, were a shambles. Apart from the first eight minutes, the controversial selection policy of Marc Lievremont had clearly not paid dividends – far from it. New Zealand were constantly on the attack and the backline – especially Ma’a Nonu, Dan Carter, Israel Dagg and substitute Sonny Bill Williams – seemed to break through their French opponents’ tackling almost at will.

Some passages of play resembled those seen in matches between teams with a far greater gulf in class than the Eden Park crowd expected to see. This was most obviously the case with the try within a matter of moments after the second half kick-off, when the All Blacks broke up the middle with almost embarrassing ease. Again, at the death, responding to a few minutes of French toil that finally brought Les Bleus seven points, the hosts raced downfield before spreading the ball to allow Williams himself to slide over for his side’s fifth score.

But it was more a case of the French being desperately disappointing than the All Blacks being imposing. France committed a catalogue of basic errors, were short of discipline and, for the most part, clueless. Their two tries were hardly demonstrations of any prowess – one was a fifty-metre interception score for Maxime Mermoz; the other, from Francois Trinh-Duc (Lievremont swallowed his pride to order him to replace Morgan Parra at fly-half), came from a tap penalty taken by Dmitri Yachvili while it appeared that the All Black forwards were still getting a talking-to from referee Alain Rolland.

Whatever Lievremont was trying to achieve with his almost-random selection policy was not achieved; even if, as conspiracy theorists have suggested, he wanted to lose, that will backfire considering the scale of this defeat. Lievremont is leaving his post as French coach at the end of the tournament, though, so his thinking could have been to employ a scorched-earth policy… At least that would explain the abysmal performance.

Ireland and Wales have both impressed so far – Ireland providing the shock of the World Cup by beating Australia; Wales by coming so close – on more than one occasion – to turning over the world champion Springboks. The winner of a quarterfinal between those two would have next to no evidence from today’s fixtures to fear either England or, especially, France, even if Lievremont were to restore his players to their natural positions.

That said, it would be typical of Ireland, but particularly of Wales, to self-implode themselves – they must prove, against Italy and Fiji respectively (wins over Russia and Namibia are a given) that France or England should fear them.