KEY POINTS:
NANTES - England coach Brian Ashton gave a cautious welcome to a 44-22 win over Samoa on Saturday but warned that more improvement was needed if they were to get past Tonga next week and into the quarter-finals.
England weathered a tremendous South Sea storm as the game hung in the balance for much of the second half before romping clear in the last 10 minutes as captain Martin Corry and winger Paul Sackey both claimed their second tries.
"Next week is another knockout game, a fight to the death, and we will need to be substantially better," Ashton told a news conference.
"Today was a step in the right direction, hopefully it will give the whole squad that little boost in confidence that we have been looking for. We've started down the road to achieving more balance to our game but there is still a hell of a lot more work to do.
"At 26-22 the game could have gone either way but we grabbed it by scruff of the neck, we believed in the processes that we knew would be successful - we went back to them and scored two tries as a result."
Corry, who helped settle England nerves with a try after two minutes, was also reluctant to get carried away. "We are pleased but we are not going overboard," said the captain who had managed a total of four tries in his previous 59 games.
"We are always about improvement, we never sit back and this will be OK. This is our first decent performance but we are far from satisfied with that, the most important thing is that we back it up next week."
The defeat ended Samoa's chance of making the quarter-finals, a bitter blow to coach Michael Jones.
"There are some very disappointed men in the changing room, we had England and we blew it," he said.
FALLEN SHORT
"In one sense that's a compliment as they are the world champions but we had really targeted this game and so have fallen short of our mission."
Jones also identified the period after Junior Polu's converted try brought his side to within four points as the key part of the game, saying he was convinced his side would go on to win.
"There were some pretty determined Samoan warriors throwing everything at them but England absorbed that then showed their ruthlessness by scoring 20 points in the last 10 minutes," he said.
"We gave everything for 70 minutes but they hung tough and put us to the sword and that is a sign of good side and a sign that England are on the way back."
Having seen both next week's combatants close up, Jones predicted that England would emerge victorious for a quarter-final against Australia.
"Tonga are playing very well, they are a team with their tails up," he said.
"I've always believed they have the talent pool and are very gifted players and can cause upsets but I still think England have too much firepower and the know-how to win these games.
- REUTERS
