Danny Care to the rescue to spare Owen Farrell and England's blushes

England needed a late Danny Care try to defeat the magnificent Islander opposition in an error-ridden 18-17 victory in Lille that will have sent the spirits of likely quarter-final opponents Fiji soaring.

A crucial moment came in the 64th minute when Farrell was lining up a routine penalty with the team 17-11 behind only for the time to run out on the shot clock – the first time it has happened in this tournament.

“I didn’t see the clock. I wasn’t aware. It was above where I was picking my target. I got lost a little bit in the kick,” saidFa rrell.

“It wasn’t good enough and I’m glad for the team’s sake that it didn’t cost us. Hopefully it doesn’t happen again.”

England had already qualified for the quarter-finals as Pool D winners but this night in Lille was a backwards step that evoked memories of August’s dismal warm-up campaign.

Head coach Steve Borthwick accepted it was a poor performance but valued the hard-fought run out before the knockout phase begins.

“Immense credit to Samoa, I thought they played brilliantly,” said Borthwick, who revealed that Manu Tuilagi suffered an injury that forced him off.

“Samoa spoke about it being their World Cup final and that’s exactly how they played. They tested us and forced us into a lot of errors.

“It was a scrappy performance for a long period by us in a real tough Test. As we look towards next week, I wanted a tough Test – and that’s exactly what we got.

“There was a lot that was not at the required standard – lots of errors, mistakes, scrappiness and for a period there were too many penalties. And then the players got hold of it on the pitch and found a way to get the result.

“A lot has been said before about this England team when it is in tough circumstances.

“Now the team was in tough circumstances against Samoa. We didn’t want to be there, we didn’t want to play the way that got us in those tough circumstances but this team found a way out of it.”

It was a night of personal triumph for Farrell, who eclipsed Jonny Wilkinson’s total of 1,179 to become the nation’s highest points scorer, but a poor team performance will have taken the shine off that achievement.

Samoa finally discovered their mojo in the climax to a disappointing group campaign and they fell metres short with one last do-or-die assault that if successful would have produced a first-ever victory in the fixture.

A lingering sense of injustice hung over an early decision – made once the conversion had been taken – to chalk off Duncan Paia’aua’s try for a hard-to-detect knock-on that would have propelled the underdogs 19-8 ahead.

Until this night in Lille, England had not conceded a try for 160 minutes but they were breached twice by Samoa wing Nigel Ah-Wong – and it could have been more.

Their only consistent weapon was the driving line-out and Fiji will have watched the events at Stade Pierre-Mauroy with interest, seeing how rattled Steve Borthwick’s side became when faced with an incisive, off-loading attack.

Samoa head coach Seilala Mapusua feels less-established teams such as his Islanders are battling against “unconscious bias” from officials when they face the heavyweights.

“I asked the question if the referees have an unconscious bias when a tier-one team plays a tier-two team. I believe there is and I believe there has been in the past,” Mapusua said. I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault, it’s what I’ve seen in our game for the last however many years, since I was playing.

“My heart breaks for these boys. I thought they deserved a lot more than they got from that game.

“I felt we did enough to earn a victory. Such is the cruel nature of sport, it wasn’t to be. In terms of the effort it’s a pretty tough one to take.”

Pinned back by scrum after scrum, Samoa eventually cracked when replacement scrum-half Care raced through a large gap and once Farrell converted England were back in front. A last-gasp attack by Samoa almost swept them over but excellent scramble defence kept them out and the dream of an upset was extinguished.