“IT was a mixed performance and we almost expected that.”
That was the summation of England’s victory in France by head coach Stuart Barrow.
England came out on top 38-4 in their only scheduled warm-up match for the autumn’s World Cup.
Barrow said: “We’re quite a young, new group and included five debutants as well, so it took a little bit of time to settle into the game and we had some uncharacteristic errors right at the start.
“But what I was pleased about was that we defended those errors really, really well and we only missed one tackle in the first half under a much improved France team who really put us under pressure.
“Our completion rate with the ball after 20 minutes was at 33 percent, so you don’t expect to do anything when you’re coming up with those errors, but we settled down and looked like a really good rugby league side in that next spell leading up to half-time.
“We scored some really nice tries and they did the things that we’d asked of them and they did them really well.
“After half-time, we came out and we had a couple more uncharacteristic errors, but then we got into the arm wrestle, were really patient and showed some really good shape and scored a nice couple of tries as well.
“It was a really tough challenge and we just about got over the top of France when we did our job correctly.”