Slade edges England over line for autumn clean sweep despite Argentina scare

England rounded off their first four-Test autumn Twickenham clean sweep since 2016 with their 11th successive win of a highly satisfying calendar year. Argentina made them sweat in the second half but 12 points from the boot of George Ford and a productive first home start by Max Ojomoh enabled Steve Borthwick’s side to edge an increasingly tense contest.

Ojomoh, on his first home start, scored a sharp early try and also provided assists for further scores by the Exeter duo of Immanuel Feyi-Waboso and Henry Slade. In the closing moments, though, it was England who were left hanging on before an injury-time lineout fumble thwarted another potentially extraordinary Pumas comeback.

It completed England’s most successful autumn since they beat South Africa, Fiji, Argentina and Australia on successive weekends in the first year of Eddie Jones’s tenure. An outbreak of pushing and shoving at the final whistle involving Henry Pollock was not the most obvious way to celebrate but England are increasingly good at finding a way to win.

To knock them over at home these days you need to take a high proportion of your chances and, ideally, not give them a head start. Argentina could initially do neither but, as Scotland found at Murrayfield a week earlier, they can be dangerous if allowed back into a contest. With 15 minutes remaining there was only one point in it, only for England’s bench to save the day when it mattered once again.

It was certainly not the hosts’ prettiest effort of the autumn, however. Without a number of injured squad members, England’s gameplan was clear enough from early on and did not include many, if any, frills. Their wingers received barely a single pass out of hand in the first half, the hosts opting instead for a more direct, kick-heavy approach. There will be days when they need to play more rugby but here they were clearly intent on not encouraging the Pumas’ running threats.

To be fair it initially worked perfectly, with England going 10-0 ahead in as many minutes on a clear, cool afternoon. A Ford drop-goal, rapidly becoming a specialité de la maison, was followed by an opportunist try for Ojomoh, two Pumas succeeding only in knocking the ball back into the Bath centre’s path and giving him a free run to the line.

Argentina, by contrast, were not at their sharpest: their first two lineout throws were called not straight and they were held up over the line with men lurking outside. When Santi Carreras, on temporarily for Tomás Albornoz, saw a penalty attempt crash back off a post it reflected their general inaccuracy.

It felt even more costly when England nailed a second precisely executed try. With nothing doing down the blindside Ford slipped the ball back inside to Ojomoh, who sent a perfect cross kick straight into the arms of the unmarked Feyi-Waboso on the right. If ever there was a good advertisement for having a second playmaker at inside centre this was it.

When Matías Moroni, running free into the home 22, succeeded only in finding the head of Ford with an attempted offload rather than one of his own players, the difference in ruthlessness was further underlined. Albornoz did finally knock over a 45-metre penalty to make it 17-3 but the initiative was still very much with England.

Up to that point their kicking game was definitely working, to the point where Ford could almost have been wearing a ringmaster’s top hat and tails. There were 23 English kicks in the first half alone, several of them descending from a great height and causing no shortage of visiting anxiety.

Given Argentina’s ability to score a lot of points quickly, however, the onus was on England to keep pushing forward rather than sitting back. A third try before the interval would have been perfect in that respect but, from a commanding lineout maul, Luke Cowan-Dickie could not quite ground the ball to the French referee’s satisfaction. It was precisely the encouragement Argentina needed.

The second half was only four minutes old when Juan Martín González broke clear in midfield and, with defenders back-pedalling, Justo Piccardo charged over beside the posts. A penalty awarded against Maro Itoje on the floor then made it a four-point ballgame and England visibly needed fresh impetus.

The Pumas, though, had also stacked their bench and another Carreras penalty closed the gap to a single point. Ford tried to restore order with another drop goal but this time his effort drifted wide and left England to try to locate a different avenue of escape.

This time it came in the form of a try from Slade with 14 minutes left, again courtesy of an Ojomoh offload with England already playing with an advantage. Another Ford penalty gave his side further breathing space and, this time, the Pumas could not quite wriggle their way out of trouble despite a defiant late try for the Harlequins winger Rodrigo Isgró.