Borthwick hails smart England for surviving 'couple of thunderbolts'

Steve Borthwick has hailed the growing ability of his England team to roll with the punches after they dramatically won their way through to next weekend’s Rugby World Cup semi-finals in Paris. They were comfortably 24-10 ahead in their Marseille quarter-final on Sunday versus Fiji only to be hit by two converted tries in a four-minute spell.

England capitulated just seven weeks ago when the Fijians hit them with a three-try second-half blast to win a Summer Nations Series encounter 30-22 at Twickenham.

In Marseille, though, England showcased the value of all their recent tuition by striking back to seal a memorable 30-24 victory with two kicks from skipper Owen Farrell – including a 72nd-minute lead-taking drop goal – and finishing it all off with a penalty-winning Courtney Lawes breakdown turnover six minutes into added time.

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The outcome left Borthwick beaming and he made sure at his post-match briefing to remind everyone about how massively written off his team had been coming into the tournament on the back of just one win in six matches.

“Many people wrote we wouldn’t get out of the group, maybe some of them are here tonight. The team performed very, very well to top the group and then played well to find a way to win tonight.

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“What we will do is recover from today’s game and then we will build towards our game next Saturday,” he said, referencing their glamour Stade de France fixture against defending champions South Africa, who knocked out hosts France in the later match on Sunday.

“The team has found itself in lots of different situations over this last period of time and we have tried to capture the learning from each one of them and I thought the players handled these situations very smartly,” the head coach continued about a campaign where they have now beaten Argentina, Japan, Chile, Samoa and Fiji.

“Game one against Argentina, dealing with that (Tom Curry) sending off on two minutes and then the way the team responded. In game two, Japan played in a completely different manner, kicking the ball every one-and-a-half rucks on average.

“I’d never seen a Japanese team play like that. Difficult conditions. Found a way through that contest. In game four against Samoa, found ourselves in a difficult situation (trailing 11-17) and played a brilliant Q4 to find a way to win the game.

“And you see today for large parts controlled the game and then had a couple of thunderbolts that hit the team in quick succession. Not long ago an England team wouldn’t have come back to win that game. This team did.

“There is a smartness about the team, there is a composure about the team led by this man [skipper Farrell] which the team is continuing to grow and we discussed that a lot during the week, talked about scenarios in the week, talked about handling different situations.

“We did a lot of that through our World Cup camps and the players are drawing on all these different experiences now. As for comparisons with 2007 (when a written-off England bounced back from an underwhelming pool hammering to defeat Australia and France to reach the final), this group is incredibly tight.

“This group is very clear on what they are trying to do and what they are trying to work on, which is we go about our work each week and that is what in 2007, after we had a bit of reset after game two, the team then concentrated on going about our work each week. That is what I see in this team.”

Captain Farrell, who was named as the starting out-half with George Ford benched, kicked 20 of England’s 30 points, leaving Borthwick to cheer: “I reiterate the words I have said many times about the man sat next to me, he is a fantastic leader. He is the kind of leader I know I would want to follow onto the pitch.

“He is a brilliant player who thrives in the contest and especially in these big occasions, he just gets even better. We are very fortunate to have Owen as a player in this team and as our leader. He should feel very proud of his performance and the way he led the team.”

A complimentary assessment was added about Fiji. “What is important at this point is to say credit to Fiji, what a fantastic team they are. A brilliant World Cup they have had.

“The way they played tonight, a team jam-packed full of world-class players full of pace and the way they scored those back-to-back tries, they were scored in a way not too many teams in the world could score like that.”