George Ford was pleased with England\u2019s second-half display in a 35-12 victory over Argentina on a special night for the fly-half.<\/p>\n
Ford marked his 100th appearance for England with a 15-point haul in La Plata as he pulled the strings for Steve Borthwick\u2019s makeshift line-up.<\/p>\n
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Without several players due to British and Irish Lions commitments, Ford and fellow co-captain Jamie George stepped up to help England through a difficult first half, in which they were temporarily reduced to 13 men, before they attacked with aplomb after the break.<\/p>\n
Tom Roebuck grabbed a brace of second-half tries and Freddie Steward also crossed before Cadan Murley wrapped up the scoring late on to earn a comprehensive win, which was all the more impressive given Alex Coles and Seb Atkinson were sent to the sin-bin at the same time during the opening period.<\/p>\n
Ford\u2019s drop goal proved the difference between the teams at the break and, in addition to three successful conversions, the Sale fly-half sent over two penalties in quick succession as Argentina threatened a response to help ease England to victory.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe just wanted to perform well and win,\u201d Ford told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about the team as always. We understand how difficult it is here in Argentina, so it is a great win for us.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were under pressure in the first half, gave away too many penalties and could not get out of our half.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to make sure second half we got out of our half and created some try-scoring opportunities, which we did early in the second half.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to back it up next week and we know Argentina will come back at us. Another challenge that we will look forward to.\u201d<\/p>\n
England were indebted to co-captain George after Coles was given a yellow card for a head-on-head contact with Facundo Isa.<\/p>\n
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Yet, after Santiago Carreras missed a simply penalty for the hosts, Ford reprised his role as chief tormentor of Argentina with a fine drop goal to make it 3-0 at the break.<\/p>\n
Atkinson had also been shown a yellow card by this point as England were briefly down to 13, but three tries in nine minutes at the start of the second half meant those cards mattered little.<\/p>\n
Sale wing Roebuck crashed over on the right inside two minutes before Ford\u2019s slick pass sent old Leicester team-mate Steward across the line.<\/p>\n
When Roebuck grabbed his second soon after Argentina looked set for a long night.<\/p>\n
However, tries for Pablo Matera and Pedro Rubiolo helped raise the prospect of an unlikely comeback, only for Ford to nail two long-range penalties before Murphy dotted down to seal a clinical away win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Ford was pleased with England\u2019s second-half display in a 35-12 victory over Argentina on a special night…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[45815,10105,748,393,4211,20681,4884,58794,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-241551","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-alex-coles","9":"tag-argentina","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-england-rugby","13":"tag-george-ford","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-jamie-george","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114803831710364471","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}