The Newcastle Falcon and England star writes for The Northern Echo.

A win is a win or so they say - but the England performance was unsatisfactory.

All credit to the Americans. We knew they would come out and play as if it was their Cup final and they did.

We underestimated them physically and we paid for that to a certain extent but we need to improve our execution and make more of scoring situations.

But it's one from one. We have to be positive going into the South African game and treat this as the cup final of our group stage.

I got on for the last ten minutes on Saturday. It's my first World Cup and I was delighted to be involved. From a personal point of view, no player likes to sit on the bench, but it's a team game and it's the coaches' decision.

To beat South Africa we have to match them physically but also have some sparks of creativity. Some guys put their hands up, but it's up to Brian to make the call and everyone has to knuckle down this week.

We've been in France nearly a week and a lot seems to have happened.

Last Wednesday the people of Versailles welcomed us at an official function when we all received a special Rugby World Cup cap and a tie. There were several hundred people waiting and cheering for us when we got off the coach at the Town Hall.

The hours d'oeurves were good and I have to admit that I worked my way up and down the buffet table with Danny Hipkiss eating all the best bits.

We went to a World War I grave site and memorial on the Somme on the way to Arras last Thursday.

The scale of the death toll puts everything into perspective. 20,000 died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. To think these lads were 18, 19 - and there was even one aged 14 - it's scary.

I was chatting with Tom Rees about this and obviously, apart from the stuff you learn at school, often the perception of what it was like is from Blackadder with two sides at the end of a football pitch shooting at each other. In a way the visit made me feel a bit ignorant in not knowing more about the endeavours of these guys and how they laid down their lives.

There are 72,000 names of guys whose bodies were never found on the monument at Thiepval, including a few Taits.

I took a few pictures and I'll show them to my grandma when I get home to see if she recognises any of the names.

On Friday we had a visit to the stadium, the game on Saturday and on Sunday night we came back from Lens on a specially chartered TGV train. It was only for us and took us directly back to Versailles. I don't know why they don't have trains like that at home - double decker and plenty of leg room!

We've been recovering and enjoyed watching Samoa play South Africa in a really physical match.

Both will be massively tough games and we know we'll have to raise our game this Friday.