Six Nations: Italy 15 - 19 England: Charlie Hodgson strikes again

With his team staring at a 12-6 deficit ten minutes into the second half, Hodgson, closed down Italian full-back Andrea Masi, blocked his clearance kick and claimed the try that dug his team out of a sizable hole. Owen Farrell showed great composure with a flawless five-from-five display of kicking with one conversion and four penalties that helped drag England over the line for the second weekend in succession.

After Hodgson’s critical intervention, coach Stuart Lancaster threw Northampton’s Lee Dickson into the fray, in place of a seriously disgruntled Ben Youngs, and England started to play some rugby in conditions that made that almost impossible. The Saints scrum-half brought some much-needed urgency and the final half hour of the match was largely played out deep inside Italian territory.

Meanwhile, Italy prop Martin Castrogiovanni suffered a fractured rib during the first half and is expected to miss the rest of the RBS 6 Nations championship. “It will be difficult for him to recover in time,” said coach Jacques Brunel.

Played on a pitch which was still half covered in several inches of snow, with intermittent rain, snow and sleet throughout, this game was never going to be a classic and sure enough the first half was dreadful.

Just about the only incident of note led to Farrell’s first penalty after Kris Burton clipped the heels of England winger David Strettle who had pounced on a rare mistake from man of the match Sergio Parisse. England might have preferred the advantage since No.8 Phil Dowson thought he’d scored when several players failed to hear the whistle.

England will take the win but a better team will surely take greater advantage of their numerous mistakes. The lineout was a mess and there were plenty of unforced errors.

Against that, the visitors had the better of the set scrum, especially after the burly figure of Castrogiovanni was forced to leave the field after just 30 minutes.

The first half was a war of attrition which England were winning, albeit by inches rather than yards.

Two penalties for Farrell nudged his team into a slender 6-0 lead that was blown to bits when Italy suddenly popped up with two tries in as many minutes at the very end of the half.

The first came from Burton after the stand-off’s grubber took a wicked deflection off Barritt’s boot. The ball hit Ben Foden square in the chest and then Barritt almost threw the ball back over his own try line where Italian winger Gio Venditti was the first to react.

Two minutes later England’s players were holding another impromptu meeting under the posts after centre Tommaso Benvenuti latched on to a loose pass from Ben Foden and showed good pace to win the sprint to the posts from fully 50 yards out. For the second Saturday in a row Lancaster had to give his half-time talk to a side trailing on the scoreboard but he seems to have said the right things because England restarted brightly even if they rarely troubled the Italians. All that changed in the 50th minute when Hodgson grabbed his second score in as many matches.

Farrell added the conversion which still left England two behind but the crowd was stunned, as were the Italian players. Self-belief flooded back into the white shirts, who saw their shot at redemption and were not going to let it go. Two further penalties followed from Farrell as the visitors turned the screw, on 53 and 65 minutes, which were enough to see England home and dry even if that adjective was hardly apt on the day.

Even in that final quarter Italy had a few chances to steal a famous victory when Tobias Botes lined up two penalties of his own but the replacement stand-off was closer to the corner flag than the posts with his first effort and his second barely got off the ground. The same could be said of Italy’s campaign to date. The Azzurri have never beaten England and they might not have a better opportunity for a long time to come.

Scorers: Italy: Tries: Venditti, Benvenuti; Con: Burton; Pen: Burton. England: Try: Hodgson; Con: Farrell; Pens: Farrell (4).

Italy: Masi, Venditti, Benvenuti, Canale (Morisi 63 min), McLean (Botes 47 min); Burton, Gori (Sememzato 57 min); Lo Cicero, Ghiraldini (D’Apice 58 min), Castrogiovanni (Cittadini 33 min), Geldenhuys (Pavanello 57 min), Bortolami, Zanni, Barbieri (Bergamasco 75 min), Parisse.

England: Foden, Ashton, Barritt, Farrell, Strettle; Hodgson (Turner-Hall 77 min), Youngs (Dickson 51 min); Corbisiero, Hartley (Webber 75 min), Cole, Botha, Palmer (Parling 58 min), Croft, Robshaw, Dowson (Morgan 51 min).

Referee: J Garces (Fra). Attendance: 73,000.