It was a tale of two halves as England made it two wins out of two this November with a 31-12 victory over Argentina at Twickenham.
England had the match all but won at half-time at 24-6 after Joe Launchbury, Billy Twelvetrees and Chris Ashton all scored tries converted by Owen Farrell, with the fly-half also kicking a penalty.
Yet, concerningly ahead of next week’s visit of world champions New Zealand, they didn’t add to their tally until two minutes before full-time when replacement back-row Ben Morgan crossed for a try.
England captain Chris Robshaw admitted they needed to work hard during the week on improving on their second-half performance.
“We need to look at ourselves going into next week and make sure we’re switched on and ready to play,” he told Sky Sports.
“New Zealand is always a tough challenge. We’ve had two tough tests and come through them with positives and areas to work on.”
By contrast his Argentina counterpart Juan Manuel Leguizamon said a stern half-time talk had engineered a marked improvement in their display.
“The first half was bad for us, we couldn’t handle the ball and couldn’t put on the pitch what we’d done in the week and that happens,” he told Sky Sports.
“We talked at half time and said we should go out and show some character and personality and we did it.”
Argentina, in their first match under new coach Daniel Hourcade, came into this fixture on the back of six straight defeats in the Rugby Championship.
After an early exchange of penalties between Farrell and opposing fly-half Nicolas Sanchez, England lock Launchbury drove over for his first Test try in the 13th minute.
Barely 60 seconds later Wilson was penalised for collapsing a scrum and, from almost halfway, Pumas centre Marcelo Bosch kicked the ball between the posts.
England, however, soon had their second try in eight minutes when Twelvetrees, who missed a tackle that led to Australia’s opening try last weekend, brushed aside three poor challenges after bursting through an inviting gap in the Argentina defence.
England strengthened their scrum by bringing on fit-again prop Alex Corbisiero in place of Joe Marler at half-time, but it was Argentina who scored the first points of the second hal, with two penalties.
Argentina were still in the game with eight minutes left but their hopes of a come-from-behind win evaporated when Bosch missed a long-range penalty.
And that miss was compounded when Morgan blasted through Santiago Cordero’s attempted tackle for a try converted by fellow replacement Toby Flood.
