England’s preparation for the upcoming rugby World Cup is beginning to look like a slow-motion car crash, after two pathetic performances against Wales. Those of a betting disposition might want to bung a bit on Argentina muscling England aside when they meet in their first pool encounter on 9 September. The Pumas aren’t world beaters, though they have had a fantastic recent run under new coach Michael Cheika, beating New Zealand, England and Australia. But England are on a seemingly irreversible downward trajectory and are becoming the most unloveable rugby side in the world, lacking any spark, method or much creativity, just a wearying kick-and-chase predictability.

Maybe the coaching team is holding back the real England and will unveil it once the World Cup proper begins: if so, that seems a bit risky. Revealingly, in the interviews after last weekend’s drab and wholly unlikely two-point victory over Wales at HQ, there came from the England camp a certain jolly pride that they had at least started firing in the last 20 minutes or so, whereas from Wales’s coach, Warren Gatland, there was nothing but barely controlled fury that his team had failed to secure the victory they should have cruised.

Meanwhile, if you want to know how to do it, have a look at Scotland’s two exuberant games against France, winning by four points in Edinburgh, then losing by the barest of margins in St Etienne, with both sides happy to move the ball quickly and as often as possible. Both were free-flowing matches enough to restore your faith that at its best rugby can be the greatest spectacle of all, a sport to get the pulse racing, even if the Red Roses aren’t capable of that right now.

Every bit as predictable and depressing as England’s current woes is captain Owen Farrell’s penchant for wild and potentially dangerous illegal tackles, which leave opponents with scrambled brains and the rest of us racking ours. It’s all very well blathering on about Farrell’s ‘warrior spirit’ and ‘never taking a backward step’, as his supporters do, but isn’t it something to be rather ashamed of when the captain of the national team is sent off for dangerous play again, despite the somewhat jaw-dropping decision to overturn Saturday’s red card.

And it pains one to say it, but coach Steve Borthwick, though clearly a decent bloke, is not creating brilliant first impressions. He has yet to string a meaningful or interesting sentence together during media interviews. Maybe he is terrific at communicating with his team: let’s hope so, for the sake of England’s puzzled fans. Anxious rugby types are even beginning to talk about the ultimate disaster over in France: that England won’t even get out of their group, though it is by far the easiest. I doubt that will happen, but I can’t really see England getting out of the last eight.

At least English sports fans still have the women’s football team, the pony-tailed Lionesses, who have shown that the women’s game is every bit the equal of the men’s in terms of entertainment. We already saw from last year’s Euros what a better experience it can be for the fans: no cocaine snorting, no fireworks up the backside and no drunken screaming aggro on the terraces. On the field, the players concentrate most of their energies on movement and athleticism, and less on hurling themselves to the turf to con the referee into awarding a free kick. Their coach, Sarina Wiegman, is clearly a class act as well as being hugely successful. She is smartly pretending not to know that when it comes to sport, England and Australia have a bit of, er, history. With a bit of luck she’ll have a play written about her and performed at the National Theatre. She deserves it.