England 48-7 Wales: The hosts focus on fine-tuning after the big win

Whether that was a deliberate and deliberate choice, we will never know.

But as the Wales substitutes raced past their side at the start of the second half, the DJs at the Allianz Stadium blared at the start of the match with Kaizer Chiefs shouting “I expect a riot”.

With a 29-0 lead, this wasn’t the boldest prediction.

In the end, Wales showed enough fight and quality to prevent England from sabotaging their national pride as they did in Cardiff last March.

But, by all accounts, England’s 48-7 victory was a landslide.

Ball in hand, they covered almost twice the meters from the visitors.

Wales were spinning like tops in defence, and came back from 16 counter-attacks. The visitors made just six in the opposite direction

England owned approximately 60% of the land. By the 25th minute, Wales had a decimal point of hope. at best.

Afterwards, head coach Steve Borthwick believed the score statistics should have been more lopsided in England’s favour.

He told BBC Radio 5 Live: “I thought we defended exceptionally well, kicked well and scored some good tries, but I think we left too much on the turf.”

“We’ll look back on this game and say there are a lot of things we can do a lot better. These are the things we need to step up next week.

“In the second half we were often within 22, but we did not come away with points on as many occasions as we would have liked.”

Ultimately, England maintained their hold on the scoreboard long enough to sit at the top of the Six Nations table after the first round.

What’s more interesting than the early stage standings for Borthwick are the lessons he can learn, although they are limited and fraught with the quality of the opposition.

Henry Arundel, a man of low power and blistering pace, inevitably made headlines after helping himself to a hat-trick in the first half.

The 23-year-old, who scored a try as a teenager with his first touch of the ball in a Test match, has a very high international batting average.

In 12 Tests, he had 11 tries.

That stat was inflated by five points against Chile in the last Rugby World Cup, plus Saturday’s work, but his ability to turn the first half into a full five points is invaluable.

When Fraser Dingwall picked up the ball and shoveled it to him for England’s fourth try of the afternoon, the cover was immediately torched.

Arundel’s improvement under the high ball this season – most notably in Bath’s win over Saracens for Noah Calori – and defence, are qualities in which he has been coached. However, his quick-twitch physique is an ability beyond anyone’s talent.

With the amount of chasing kicks and subsequent chaos in the modern game, it has become a more lethal weapon than ever before.