MARTYN SADLER reflects on England’s 82-0 victory over France.

CAN anyone explain to me why this game wasn’t played a week earlier?

The two teams from Europe coming to play in an Australian World Cup should clearly have contested their first match of the tournament against each other, effectively eliminating jet lag as a factor.

Instead they played each other when it might already be too late for England to qualify for the semi-finals, after going down 30-12 to Tonga a week earlier.

The situation isn’t yet totally hopeless, however, although England’s captain George Williams’ suggestion after the match that England now have a half-chance of qualifying for the semis may be over-estimating the possibility.

I would assess England’s chances at no more than ten per cent.

As things stand, after this result England have a positive points difference of 64 points, while Samoa, after their two easy wins against France and Papua New Guinea, have a positive points difference of 132 points.

If Samoa beat Tonga next Sunday at CommBank Stadium, England will go out of the competition because they would probably finish level on points as Tonga but would go out because they lost the game between the two.

So England’s only chance is for Tonga to win by one point or more.

In that case England winning against Papua New Guinea on Friday is essential.

And they have to close the points difference with Samoa, which currently stands at 68 points.

So England’s task against the Kumuls is quite easy to define.

They have to win by 68 points and then pray for a Tonga victory against the Samoans.

And if England defeat the Kumuls by a lower margin than that, then it means that the Tongans would also have to beat the Samoans by a margin that, when the two are added together, amounts to 69 points.

So if England beat PNG by 50 points, for example, they would have to hope that Tonga could beat Samoa by 19 points.

I can easily imagine the Tongans beating Samoa, but I can’t see them winning by that margin.

And if England do beat PNG by 68 points, which also seems unlikely, although not impossible, then Samoa would go into Sunday’s game very highly motivated.

It’s incredibly difficult to see it happening, barring a miracle, but that’s what we now have to hope for.

But at least we are talking about England still having a chance in the tournament, thanks to this remarkable 82-point victory.

I sat down to watch this game convinced that the French would play much better than they did in their opening game against Samoa, which they lost 78-4.

And for more than 20 minutes the thought of a runaway victory by England looked like a fantasy.

The French moved the ball well and they defended strongly against whatever England threw at them.

But suddenly England broke through with their opening try by Dom Young, which came after French hooker Amir Bourouh had thrown a forward pass from a scrum, giving possession to England when the French should have enjoyed a six-tackle set.

England worked the ball to the right, Young went over and suddenly the French bubble had burst.

Within four minutes England had added two more tries to take an 18-point lead. And it was no coincidence that England began to dominate when Jez Litten came onto the field to replace Brad O’Neill at hooker.

O’Neill hadn’t done anything wrong to that point, but Litten’s lightness on his feet and his ability to put the markers under pressure at the ruck by running from dummy-half seemed to change the game.

And his English team-mates were able to take advantage of his presence on the field.

I wrote in last week’s issue after England’s defeat against Tonga that Litten should have come onto the field much earlier than he did, which was after about 60 minutes in that match when England were 22-6 down, and I was glad to see him on the field in the first half on Saturday.

He allowed the players around him to flourish and England hit the French with another three tries in quick succession before half-time to take a 36-0 lead and we could see the makings of a very big score.

And so it proved, with hat-tricks for Young and Herbie Farnworth and first appearances in the World Cup for Jack Welsby and Mikey Lewis, who both came on just over half-way through the second half to score three tries between them, although Welsby showed a surprising lack of pace when handing on the ball for Lewis’s first.

The star of the show was undoubtedly AJ Brimson, whose attacking skills from fullback were outstanding.

All we need now is for them to do the same thing against the Kumuls on Friday.