Beaten Borthwick claims 'great resolve' gives him hope for England
Doom and gloom was the expected narrative when Steve Borthwick came in to conduct his first post-game media briefing as England head coach, but the new man refused to play ball at Twickenham in the wake of a sobering 29-23 Guinness Six Nations loss.
The more he was invited to chew over the entrails of the defeat, the more he responded as the glass-half-full guy who will be striding back into English Rugby HQ in eight days’ time convinced his team will do much better in their round two outing.
There is every chance that will transpire. After all, it is little old Italy who are next up at the big rugby place in London and they have never managed a result in the fixture, no matter how out of sorts England have been.
It was only when Borthwick had his final say at the end of a 13-minute top-table conference he shared with skipper Owen Farrell that the veil really slipped and there was an admonishment for how standards had fallen under the dismissed Eddie Jones. As a former second row who went on to become England forwards coach between 2016 and 2020, he sure should know what a tight engine room should be like and he intimated he hadn’t seen it in recent years.
“It is clear to say right now that the England set-piece in recent times has not been strong,” he admitted, voicing criticism about what he had inherited from his old mentor who cleared his desk with a record of just five wins in a dozen 2022 matches.
What a try!
Deadly Duhan does it again for the bonus point.
This guy ??#GuinnessSixNations | #ENGvSCO pic.twitter.com/N6Ue5T3yRj
— Guinness Six Nations (@SixNationsRugby) February 4, 2023
“You always want to have a strong set-piece, a strong scrum and a strong maul and those are going to take time to build, but we are going to persevere with those. Those things don’t happen quickly. We have got to develop that. England hasn’t had a strong maul for a few years now. What we have got to make sure of is we get better so that we have different weapons in our game.”
That was the thing Borthwick had earlier tried to stress, that England did wield some other weapons in a match where they led 13-12 at the break and 20-12 early in the second half before their effort came a cropper – as was the case on too many occasions with Jones at the helm.
What would surely bug was how England dominated territory (71 per cent), spending more than 16 minutes in the opposition half, yet their three-try effort was eclipsed by four-try Scotland, who only spent a mere five minutes in English territory. Try and get your head around that.
“I know it’s a challenge, I know it’s a big challenge,” accepted Borthwick about his mission to turn England back into winners. “Like you watched those games in the autumn. But what I have seen today, if the team in the autumn conceded a couple of scores early they didn’t come back from that.
“These guys did and they showed great resolve in that first half to get in the position they were in and they came out in the first part of that second half and were really strong. Unfortunately, we let the opposition back in and we shouldn’t do that and we will make sure we don’t do that going forward.”
Having had about 11 days to work with his inheritance, he wasn’t going to have a pop at his own. For instance, his buddy Kevin Sinfield got a free pass as the defence coach despite the concession of four tries. Patience please was his verdict. “We slipped off a number (of tackles). When you are trying to put in a new defensive system that takes time.
“We will make sure we keep working as hard as we can to improve that. You don’t want to be there but there are going to be mistakes as you try to build a team, trying to implement new systems. We will make sure we are better next week.
“We are clearly disappointed with the result. We said before the game we were playing against a Scotland team that has controlled this fixture in recent years and they were very good today. They didn’t get an awful lot of chances but the chances they got they took ruthlessly. For us, we need to make sure we limit those chances but also be able to shut them down.
“From our perspective, we saw some growth, particularly in the attacking side of the game. The team played like they had points in them, had try-scoring potential. The game was quicker but clearly, we were disappointed with the result.
“There were a couple of crucial turnovers, a couple of lineouts that hurt us and we gave them too much space on their kick return, particularly out of their own 22. They moved the ball and attacked very well from deep.
“We were hit with a couple of scores from out of nowhere really in that first half and I thought the team responded incredibly well. To go in at half-time in the position we were in it was immense credit to the players. 20 to 12 up, we need to control that game, we shouldn’t be letting that game go away from us and we did.”
He wasn’t going to be disillusioned by the setback, this fourth round one defeat for England in four straight Six Nations. Serial slow starters, indeed. “There is a lot of good luck in it and this is part of the growth of the team, you have to go through some pain.
“We don’t want to but there was certainly enough there on that pitch to say I could see some aspects working now and I could see some things we have to improve on. We got ourselves into that position and could have gone on and won that game. We didn’t.
“If I was sat here going there was nothing to pull from that game, couldn’t see how we could have won the game, it would be a different story. As I sit here I can see what we should have done, how we could have done things differently that would have allowed us to win the game.
“We want to be a really good team, that is the main message here. We want to be a successful team that wins Test matches, a lot of Test matches, and when you get to that level you don’t give teams the opportunities that we did. This for me is the first step.”
The first step towards winning at the second attempt. This sure was a tough Test head coach baptism for the glass-half-full guy.
Comments on RugbyPass
Bulls by 5. Plus another 50.
3 Go to commentsJohan Goosen avatar. Cute. Surely someone at RP knows how to do a google image search?
3 Go to commentsCan’t these games play a little earlier? Asking for a friend.
3 Go to commentsIt’s impressive that we can see huge stadiums with attendance in the 40 000 to 50 000 region. It shows how popular this competition is becoming. What is even more impressive is the massive growth in broadcast viewership. The URC is one of the two best leagues in the World, the other being the Top14.
7 Go to commentsChristie is not Sottish, like the majority of the Scotland team.
2 Go to commentsHold the phone, decline over-rated. Is it a one game, dead cat bounce or the real thing? Has the Penney dropped? Stay tuned.
45 Go to commentsTotally deserved win for the Crusaders Far smarter than the Chiefs who seem to be avoiding the basics when it matters Hotham showed them what was missing and Hannah seems a real find - a tad light but that can be fixed over time
8 Go to commentsGreat insight into the performance culture with Sarries and I predict Christie will be a fixture in the Scotland team now for some time to come. However, he is slightly missing his own point around Scotland “being soft” when he cites physicality examples in defence of that slight. The issue is much closer to the example he referenced around feeling off before a game but being told “it doesn’t matter, you can still play well” by Farrell. Until Scotland can get their psyche in that square, they will carry on folding under extreme pressure…
2 Go to comments> We are having to adapt, evolve and innovate more than when we were in Super Rugby where there was only really one style that everybody had to play to gain the most success. Have = able to? Interesting what that one style might be? I thought SA sides still had bad tours now, or at least bad schedule, months away? Those extra few hours flights have to be a killer though, no surprise to see their sides doing so badly at the start of the season each year. I wouldn’t enjoy that unfairness as a supporter.
7 Go to commentsThe problem for NZ, and Aus, is they ripped up the SR model and lost a massive chunk of revenue that hasn’t been replaced. Don’t forget SA clubs went North because they were left with no choice, Argy unceremoniously binned and Japan cast adrift. Now SR wasn’t perfect, far from it, but they’ve jumped into something without an effective plan, so far, to replace what they’ve lost. The biggest revenue potential now lies in Japan but it won’t be easy or quick to unlock, they are incredibly insular in culture as a nation. In the meantime, there is a serious time bomb sitting under SH rugby and if it happens then the current financial challenges will look like a picnic. IF the Boks follow their provincial teams and head north then it’s revenue meltdown. Not guaranteed to happen but the status quo is a very odd hybrid, with the Boks pointing one way and the clubs pointing the other way. And for as long as that remains then the threat is real.
45 Go to commentsI think Etene has had some good tuition, likely while at the Warriors to be a professional that helped his rugby jump, but he was certainly thrown in the deep end way too early. Should have arguably 20 less SR caps, and therefor a way better record that he does at his age, but his development would have been fast tracked by the need to satiate his signing away from league. Again, credit to him and others that he has done it so well. Easy to fall over under that pressure in the big leagues like that but he kept at it when I myself wasn’t sure he was good enough.
1 Go to commentsAwesome story. I wonder what a bigger American (SA) scene might have mean for Brex.
1 Go to comments“Johnny McNicholl and the Crusaders” save a Penney. Who has been in camp this week and showed them how to play?
8 Go to commentsSo, reports of the Crusaders’ demise / terminal decline are perhaps just - slightly - premature/exaggerated…? 🤔 Will we see a deep-dive into that by the estimable Rugbypass scribes, and maybe one or two mea culpas? Thought not.
8 Go to comments1. The Chiefs are rudderless without DMac, which enhances his AB chances 2. Chiefs pack are powderpuffs. The hard men arent there anymore 3. They had their golden title chance last yr and wont threaten this yr. Gone in second round of playoffs.
8 Go to commentsHonestly, why did you have to publish such a foolish article the day they play us? 😂
45 Go to comments> They are not standalone entities. They are linked to an amateur association which holds the FFR licence that allows the professional side to compete in the league. That’s a great rule. This looks like the chicken or egg professional scenario. How long is it going to be before the club can break even (if that is even a thing in French rugby)? If the locals aren’t into well it would be good to se them drop to amateur level (is it that far?). Hope they can reset from this level and be more practical, there will be a time when they can rebuild (if France has there setup right).
1 Go to commentsWhat about changing the ball? To something heavier and more pointed that bounces unpredictably. Not this almost round football used these days.
35 Go to commentsThis is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?
35 Go to commentsWow, didn’t realise there was such apathy to URC in SA, or by Champions Cup teams. Just read Nick’s article on Crusaders, are Sharks a similar circumstance? I think SA rugby has been far more balanced than NZs, no?
4 Go to comments