When Rhodri Morgan, the first minister of the Welsh national assembly, presented the Wales players with their jerseys at their exclusive Vale of Glamorgan retreat on Saturday morning, he told them to think back to 1980.

It was the year when Wales narrowly went down to England at Twickenham having played with 14 men for most of the match after Paul Ringer's early dismissal. Morgan reminded the players that rugby union had in the past given the Welsh a sense of national identity in the face of economic depressions caused by the English.

He compared the pit closures of the early 80s with the news last week that thousands of steelmaking jobs would be lost in Wales. What better time for England to visit Cardiff? Morgan's rhetoric was misplaced. Wales relied on the heavy industries of scrum and line-out and duly won the setpieces but lacked the skills to cope with new England.

Coach Graham Henry based his team on England's three tests last autumn when they had established a superiority at forward but lacked a cutting edge behind. Henry opted for size and strength rather than speed and his choice of the outhalf Stephen Jones at full-back betrayed his defensive thinking.

Henry needed the Welsh weather to do its worst, but the predicted rain stayed away until the final whistle when a fine drizzle settled on an ardour dampened Cardiff. "The perfect pitch suited England," said Henry. "They will take some beating in the championship, but every dog has his day and in the rain and mud who knows."

Woodward had been supremely confident all week. "When the opposition talk about their stadium and the noise of the crowd, you know you have won the battle," he said on Saturday evening.

As Martin Johnson led the England team from the dressing room before the start of the match, he paused by a set of double doors which led to the tunnel. The crowd, which could see on the big screens in the ground that England were about to emerge, started clearing their collective throat.

Johnson stopped and opened one of the doors. "Listen to that," he said to his players. "Let's shut them up." 20 minutes later, with England two tries up, there was the sound of silence with not even a yap from the underdogs.

Anyone looking at them without knowing the score would have thought it was Wales who had won by 29 points. They had 62 drives from rucks compared to 17, 33 passes from rucks to 23 and won twice as much ball in open play as England, 97-45.

They took the set-pieces 3625, broke the gainline 38 times to England's 16 and made 66 tackles compared to the visitors' 116, but, most tellingly, England made 18 off-loads in the tackle compared to Wales's 8.

England had the continuity and the pace to go with it which Wales so desperately lacked. Their defence was so strong they were able to wait for Wales to make mistakes. Three of England's tries came directly from misplaced kicks by the home side.

"I said before the match only our best would have been good enough, but I am not sure now it would have been," admitted the Wales captain, David Young. "There will be calls in Wales for heads to roll because that is always the way here after a bad defeat, but it is not that simple. England have opened up a gap and we have to work out a way of closing it."

The ineligible Shane Howarth would have been at full-back but for the "Grannygate" saga. He watched the match in a Caerleon pub, unable to face going to the Millennium Stadium. "The Poms were superb," he said. "It hurts me to say it, but they are as good as anything around." Out with the old and in with the new.