England 35 - 26 Barbarians: England warm up for Australia with solid defeat of Barbarians

James Haskell, Shontayne Hape, Ben Foden and Mike Tindall all touched down as England made the most of some generous defending to cruise to victory.

Toulon-bound winger Paul Sackey scored a try in each half for the Barbarians and replacements David Smith and Census Johnson rumbled over to give the scoreline an air of respectability.

England head Down Under today night for a five-match tour that includes two Tests against the Wallabies, two meetings with the Australian Barbarians and a clash with the New Zealand Maori.

All three teams will pose a far sterner test than the Barbarians did yesterday, at times apparently reacting to the sunshine over Twickenham as if they were playing touch rugby on the beach.

The match did give England manager Martin Johnson a chance to run the rule over a clutch of returning players and new faces before the tour starts in earnest a week on Tuesday, but he accepted that his team had been less than impressive.

"We have got to be smarter and shouldn't have gone into some of the areas that we did," said Johnson "There were some very good things in the first half and we got away from them a few times. The Barbarians were always going to be dangerous, particularly when they had nothing to lose."

Charlie Hodgson, back after two years out, made a lively contribution at fly-half and finished with ten points, while the back row of Nick Easter, Steffon Armitage and Haskell were all prominent.

Scrum-half Danny Care responded well to the gauntlet Ben Youngs threw down with his performance for Leicester in Saturday's Guinness Premiership final.

England made countless linebreaks and Mark Cueto was a constant danger running from deep, but there remain question marks over Hape at inside centre.

But Johnson will need to see his men tested in far more hostile surroundings. The Twickenham stadium announcer's last words before kick-off were to prepare the 41,035 crowd for "80 minutes of world class rugby", yet for the most part the Barbarians offered anything but.

They may be proud to uphold the old amateur ethos of bonding at the bar but optional defence neither makes for a decent contest nor, in this case, helps to properly assess how good England are.