'I think there's life in the old man yet!'
To beat France at Twickenham and to play the way we played doesn't really get much better than that. It was a massive team effort from all the boys. Our forwards performed exceptionally well, got us on the front foot and we played the type of rugby I don't think the French expected us to play. We still made a lot of mistakes, especially in the first 20 minutes, but for a new group of guys with limited time together, I thought it was a very good performance.
Our pack was superb and Martin Corry led them very well from the second row. The work rate from the likes of Tom Rees made such a massive difference and they didn't really give the French any quality ball to play with and when they did get the ball they didn't really have much time or space to do anything with it.
The way Brian Ashton wants us to play is very expansive and that's exactly what you saw out there on Sunday. I've always known Brian to want to play that way and he's picked the team accordingly. Fair play to the boys, they've stood up and been counted and that's vital. A lot of young guys came on and made a massive impact and although we were down at half time, we knew that if we kept hold of the ball and went through the phases we would be fine.
In the backs, Floody, Strettle and my London Irish team-mate Shane Geraghty played absolutely fantastic. I put him away and he made a great break to set up Mike Tindall for the second try.
I thought Toby Flood controlled the game extremely well and Tom Rees and Tom Palmer were immense in the pack. This is the future of England rugby and these guys will develop even better if they're in a winning environment. I was actually a little disappointed with my own performance. I made a couple of mistakes I don't normally make handling-wise and that's just not me. I was pretty gutted by it but there was a lot of emotion involved but to come through with a victory for the first time as England captain the way we played more than made up for it.
I was happy with the break I made to set up Toby Flood's try so I guess there's life in the old man yet! Josh Lewsey was on my left hand side so I could have easily given him the ball but I thought I'd give it to Floody instead!
Obviously the talk now will be about Jonny coming back for Wales but I think that any three from Jonny, Shane and Floody will do an excellent job there. That's the midfield of the future.
'Shane Geraghty played absolutely fantastic'
It's vital that we keep our feet on the ground for the final game against Wales in Cardiff. We did very well against France but in the same breath we need to be very critical of our performance and make sure that we get better for Cardiff. The basic individual errors are not acceptable and we need to be hard on ourselves and hopefully we can put some more points on the board.
We need to go to Wales, improve on our performance and win well.
Mike Catt.
11th March 2007
