Flutey: More to come for England

Riki Flutey has challenged England to put together the complete performance when Scotland travel to London this weekend after their devastating first-half show against France.

Martin Johnson’s much-maligned side raced out of the blocks to open up a 29-0 half-time lead in Sunday’s RBS 6 Nations clash at Twickenham.

Wasps centre Flutey scored two tries as England eventually ran out 34-10 winners but he admitted the gloss had been taken off the result by their failure to pull away further in the second half.

He said: “We take a lot of confidence out of the performance. It was obvious guys were beginning to understand their roles and responsibilities in attack. The set-piece moves went really well.

“It was nice scoring in the first few minutes and having the crowd right behind us from the word go. That was fantastic. Just awesome.

“But now we have to look at the second half and see how we can put together an 80-minute performance. We were confident at half-time and we talked about going back out there and doing the same. But we turned the ball over too often.”

The video of the match will be assessed as usual this week and Johnson will not be satisfied with the 13 penalties England conceded, even if this time none of them led to a yellow card.

Flutey believes that was a key factor.

He added: “Keeping 15 players on the field was huge for us. Before this game we hadn’t conceded any tries with 15 players on the field so we always had confidence in our defence.”

Man of the match Tom Croft, meanwhile, revealed the performance was partly inspired by the desire to avoid the wrath of Johnson.

The Leicester flanker said: “Johnno can be a scary man sometimes when you walk back in the dressing room so the best thing is to play well and get a win and stay on the right side of him. It’s brilliant for him and brilliant for the team.

“We owed ourselves that performance. There has been frustration in the camp but that has also led to excitement. We were itching to get on the field to put things right and prove people wrong, all those people who doubted us.”

Johnson is due to announce the team to face Scotland later today and he has two injury worries to deal with after Joe Worsley and Toby Flood picked up injuries against France.

Flood went off at half-time nursing a problem with his right shoulder while Worsley required six stitches in a cut to his right thumb.

Flood said: “Hopefully, it is not too bad. If it needs an injection, it needs an injection. I felt happy to carry on but the doctors made the call to not risk it. It was frustrating.”