SUNDAY night against Wales reunited Mike Catt and me at inside centre and fly half for the first half of rugby we’d played together for about 2½ years. Catty is a great talker and a great thinker on the pitch. He’s got good experience, he’s very strong-minded in what he wants and he makes it happen by the way he communicates and bosses people around. He played brilliantly.

He’s not afraid to put his hand up and say: “This one’s my call. I’m going to do this.” That sometimes works for me. It does give me time to sit back a bit and have a little bit of a look and a think, and the way the game went on Sunday, there were certainly times when I needed that.

One of the reasons we seem to work well together is because we think similarly and therefore I can find him on my wavelength. I go to do something and he’s already there, or he’ll do something and I’ll know what he is thinking.

So Mike was great against Wales and he clearly played a massive part in rescuing England after that first half, when so much was going against us. Most of the rest of us know that we’re still not hitting our best form yet, but this isn’t the time to panic.

We just have to accept that we’ve been working hard on the practice field and that it is not quite transferring on to the match field yet. But we believe in what we’re doing to the extent that we go out there thinking: “If we continue doing this, it’ll all come together.”

It’s the same thought process that I take to the kicking. Sometimes the kicking sessions don’t go so well and while it may feel terrible at the time, you know that you’ve been doing these sessions day in, day out for eight years or whatever and a session eight years ago is still in the bank, a session three weeks ago is still in the bank. It’s the accumulation of the good work: it’s all in the bank.

So in the case of this England team, we’ve got good performances under our belts going back a number of years and while we haven’t been overly impressed by the way we’ve played, we know that it’s in the bank. So this week will be all about doing the right things to try to bring it out.

We know we need to be back at our best to play France. I don’t think it’s far away. It’s little things here and there that we need: people tuning in to each other, people understanding what other people are thinking and what others want from the game, the sort of thing that seems to come naturally to Catty and I.

But we’ve also got to retain a natural part of the game. Maybe at the moment we’re waiting for that to kick in. What is good is that we’re seeing it at times during the games, we just need to increase those times.

As for my own game, I gather the press hasn’t been that kind to me. I’m totally at ease with the fact that people are entitled to their opinion and it’s not in my nature to try to mount my own defence. But I would say that I’m proud because I thought I was working hard and doing what I had to do. Maybe in some games you don’t always run with the ball so much or get the chance to make big tackles or hit the dropped goals. The Wales game seemed more about soaking up the pressure that they put on us, working your guts out, running till it hurts and then clearing out rucks, making tackles, challenging for the ball and getting off the ball. That’s all part of the game and maybe these things are not quite so noticeable. We’re in the semi-finals now and I’m happy to move on.

We’re also in Manly, which is probably my favourite venue in Australia. I find it all very easy here. It’s nice to look out and see the beach and enjoy the pace of life. England need to pick up the pace a bit right now; this is the place for it.