{"id":272850,"date":"2026-02-07T21:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T21:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/272850\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T21:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T21:25:10","slug":"england-48-7-wales-hosts-make-emphatic-start-to-six-nations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/272850\/","title":{"rendered":"England 48-7 Wales: Hosts make emphatic start to Six Nations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">England coach Steve Borthwick had forecast a barrage of high kicks from Wales and, with the Twickenham surface slick after heavy morning rain, he was soon proved right.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wales scrum-half Tomos Williams hoisted the first box-kick after 40 seconds and Ellis Mee&#8217;s chase of another sky-scraping boot earned Wales some prime field position.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">England were not averse to taking the same route, with George Ford testing Louis Rees-Zammit with a pair of spiral bombs early on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It was soon clear though that only England had the urgency, intensity and power to capitalise from the chaos that followed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After George Ford&#8217;s third-minute penalty, a first England try followed as Guy Pepper led the heavy brigade into contact and Ford zipped the ball wide for Arundell to stroll in.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Shipping points at the rate of one a minute, Wales&#8217;s faint hopes were then torpedoed by two yellow cards in the space of 60 seconds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Nicky Smith and fellow front-rower Dewi Lake were dispatched to the sin bin in quick succession as they illegally went after England at a line-out close to their line.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Understaffed and underpowered, England picked Wales off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Given the option of a penalty in the shadow of the posts to restart, captain Jamie George called for a scrum to the glee of the Allianz Stadium crowd.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The set-piece monstering duly followed, opening space for Ford to casually punt the ball wide for Arundell for his second. Ben Earl then bullocked over out wide as England made the most of their powerplay against 13 men.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wales were restored to their full complement at 22-0 down, but they rarely managed to wrestle momentum their way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">England&#8217;s fourth try \u2013 Arundell&#8217;s third \u2013 was largely self-inflicted as Dan Edwards lobbed a pass behind Rees-Zammit, allowing Dingwall to scoop up and feed Arundell. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Bath wing had touched the ball only three times, and scored on each occasion, recording the team&#8217;s first Six Nations hat trick since Jonny May against France in 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England coach Steve Borthwick had forecast a barrage of high kicks from Wales and, with the Twickenham surface&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-272850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}