It looks glum for sorry England - Jonny set to pay for shambles

Scotland's stirring salvation of their season leaves the floundering World Cup runners-up no option but to make changes in response to a nightmarish non-performance which condemns them to another third-rate finish.

Wilkinson, for so long the most automatic of choices, will come under more scrutiny than at any time since his debut 10 years ago.

Coach Brian Ashton, plunged into the second crisis of his reign six months after the first at the World Cup in Paris, now has to think the unthinkable: of returning to Twickenham without his record goalkicker.

His substitution leaves the door open for Danny Cipriani to go straight from the nightclub into the team against Ireland at Twickenham on Saturday in the hope that somebody will stop the rot.

The failure of England's kicking strategy will inevitably leave Wilkinson carrying the can instead of the nation's hopes for a quick fix to their alarming decline.

English were unable to create anything other than another fine mess for the second time in a month — from start to finish in this case, unlike the Wales game when they played in some style before imploding.

The sight of the deflated fly half sitting beside equally forlorn captain Phil Vickery in the dug-out, watching the pre-match favourites go down without firing a shot provided one of the most telling images of the championship.

Chris Paterson's knack of never missing and persuading even a lowtrajectory shank to wobble its way over gave his opposite number little reason to celebrate his world points record.

With Charlie Hodgson, as well as Cipriani, crying out for the chance to give the English backs a little imagination, not even Wilkinson's phenomenal record at Twickenham is likely to save him.

The ultimate team player will accept whatever fate Ashton has in store for him without rancour but he is far from being the only player hoping for a reprieve.

The bold plan to unleash Lesley Vainikolo on the assumption that the dreadlocked Tongan would strike terror into every opponent has patently not worked. Murrayfield on one of Auld Reekie's foul days was, admittedly, no place for a volcano and they only gave him the ball twice in the first half. He lost the first in contact and dropped the second.

There is no shortage of alternatives, even if the absent Josh Lewsey appears to have been made persona non grata for the entire tournament.

It is high time England considered a more subtle approach, which surely means a belated recall for James Simpson-Daniel, the nearest thing they have to Shane Williams, with a case to be made for one of the uncapped duo, Paul Hodgson or Danny Care, at scrum half.

Vickery's acknowledgement that nobody can be sure of his place is a typically honest reflection of his country's predicament. England can only pray that James Haskell recovers from his ankle trouble in time to inject some dynamism into a pack outmuscled in conditions eerily evocative of when a vastly superior English side perished at the same place eight years ago.

Unable to escape from the suffocating tartan blanket thrown over them, England were even outsledged, as revealed by Nathan Hines, the abrasive Aussie-Scot from Wagga Wagga, over his running feud with Sale prop Andrew Sheridan which twice prompted warnings from South African referee Jonathan Kaplan.

"The first time I tackled him, he knocked the ball on," said Hines. "I got up and patted him on the head. 'You've knocked on there, Andrew,' I said with a hint of sarcasm. 'Bad luck, mate." When they conceded a penalty within a minute of the restart, I gave him another pat.

"Nice one, big fella.' He came at me with something you wouldn't want to print in a family newspaper and I can't really blame him to be honest. All's fair in rugby war."

There have now been so many X-certificate offerings from England in recent years that it is increasingly difficult to rank them in descending order of desperation. It has become an annual event — Cardiff under Andy Robinson in 2005, Edinburgh the following year, Croke Park last year and now this, the worst of the lot given that England would probably not have scored a try had they been allowed to start all over again.

Ashton, having shown his capacity for taking a tough a decision over Cipriani, now has to make several more if he is to convince an increasingly sceptical Red Rose army that their team is on the road to somewhere.

Ironically, the team responded to their leader's tough line on discipline by showing so little that they started by conceding three penalties in three minutes.

'The last thing we said before leaving the changing room was not to give penalties away,' said Ashton, trying hard to mask his exasperation. 'And what's the first thing we do when we get out there?

Anyone trying to pin the blame for this shambles on Ashton's late change of full backs — when Iain Balshaw did nothing wrong and was not at fault for the accidental collision which put Rory Lamont in hospital — is missing the point.

England, despite their win over the tactically naive French, are an ordinary team who finished a very poor second to a team ranked one place above Italy and one below Fiji.

Make no mistake, Scotland, under the admirable Mike Blair, deserved to walk off with the Calcutta Cup after history had repeated itself yet again: a six-point win like the three before them — 18-12 two years ago, 19-13 in 2000, 13-7 in 1990. England, arms folded in resignation, had been beaten by a team boasting an aggregate try count of one.

But why worry about tries when the opposition doled out five kickable penalties at the rate of one every nine minutes?

SO WHAT DID CIPRIANI GET UP TO?

Danny Cipriani was cheered loudly by a 10,000-strong crowd when he came on as a replacement in Wasps' 29-25 Guinness Premiership win over Harlequins at Adams Park.

Cipriani, 20, axed by England following a midnight visit to a London nightclub, came through his 20-minute appearance yesterday without making any mistakes.

Wasps director of rugby Ian McGeechan said: "He's handled it all really well. He wanted to show that, with his rugby kit on, he has plenty to offer."

Of Cipriani's axeing from England duty, McGeechan added: "There are ways of dealing with things and we feel it could probably have been dealt with more sensitively. To take, effectively, his first cap away is a big call."

SCOTLAND: Southwell; Lamont (Parks 21min), Webster, Morrison, Walker; Paterson, Blair (Lawson 76); Jacobsen (Dickinson 56), Ford (Thomson 25), Murray (Smith 68), Hines, MacLeod (White 63), Strokosch, Taylor, Hogg (Brown 72).

ENGLAND: Balshaw; Sackey, Noon, Flood (Tait 66), Vainikolo; Wilkinson (C Hodgson 70), Wigglesworth; Sheridan, Mears (Chuter 67), Vickery (Stevens 70), Shaw (Kay 66), Borthwick, Croft, Easter, Lipman (Narraway 73).

Referee: J Kaplan (South Africa).