England teetering on the brink

England stand one defeat away from a potentially-humiliating World Cup exit after they were smashed 36-0 by South Africa at Stade de France.

The reigning world champions must beat Samoa in Nantes on Sunday week to have any realistic chance of staying alive after the Springboks dealt them their record World Cup defeat.

England captain Martin Corry said: "First of all, the lads are shell-shocked. We have to dress ourselves down, give ourselves 24 hours and start focusing on Samoa."

He added: "We gifted South Africa pretty much 20 points, and they didn't have to work particularly hard for those points. We then found ourselves playing catch-up rugby against one of the best sides in the world.

"We are not going to hit the self-destruct button. We will analyse this performance. After 24 or 48 hours, it is all about Samoa.

"We are a side playing under our full potential. We have got to keep striving to produce a performance we know we are capable of."

England's latest dismal display followed a stuttering 28-10 success against the USA last weekend, but England head coach Brian Ashton added: "I won't accept this was a worse performance than against America last week.

"South Africa are probably one of the top two sides in world rugby. They played extremely well for the full 80 minutes. We didn't help ourselves in the first half of the game.

"There is going to have to be a big performance next Saturday, end of story, otherwise we are going to be on our way home.

"I don't want to talk about individual players. The defeat was largely down to the way South Africa played - they were incredibly efficient in everything they did."