England player ratings vs France | 2026 Guinness Men's Six Nations

Itoje wasn’t pinged for a high tackle at the end - he knocked the ball down deliberately which was petulant and stupid when France already had Pen advantage. Which Pen did France take? The stupid Maro one. He needs to sort this sort of behaviour like this.

Finn Smith should be at a 6. Yes he led the line well, but he his lack of accuracy off the tee (something he is 100% accountable for) is what lost us the game. A hooker who can’t throw won’t make it, a prop who can’t scrummage won’t make it - same applies to a kicker who can’t kick.

Yesterday left me with mixed feelings . . . . .

For all the ENG supporters who said we should be playing a more attacking intent and were capable of better, yesterday proved their point . . . . I then wonder why our coaches have been the last people to realise what the fans have been saying and that frustrates the heck out of me.

The potential of the current crop of ENG players is very high and I just can’t get comfortable that Steve Borthwick is the right person to maximise the potential from this Group.

So with Genge/George/Heyes, ENG had a dominant scrum and when Rodd/LCD/Davison came on, we lost that dominance.

I know Baxter & Stuart have been a big loss but why didn’t we give game time to the likes of Fasogbon, who is a much better scrummager at this level and the same size unit as Stuart.

Personally, I would have played Ruskin & Fasogbon off the bench, which would have given ENG a better scrum, carry & breakdown and you wouldn’t have had to burn the starters for such long shofts throughout the tournament.

Having seen how good the ENG defence were in the Summer & Autumn, I would not have expected ENG would end the 6 Nations with the worst defence stats.

We’ve gone from a world class level of 190 tackles, at 90% tackle completion conceding 20 points a game to 127, at 77 tackle completion, conceding +30 points a game.

That’s awful and starts to question why we put a rookie defence coach in charge of ENG.

That’s probably the immediate area of focus for the 6Nations review and then you can look at overall tactics & selection, which clearly didn’t work.

Overall I agree with these but some questionable ratings.

JVP a 7.5, really? Had he not kicked the ball away in the final minute England would have probably won. South Africa or New Zealand would never kicked in that position. Instead they’d have kept the ball and force the opposition to get it back off them.

Thought Spencer was really good. Whilst JVP can look good in moments I think his overall decision making is shocking.

Also thought Heyes was excellent, yet he only gets a 7.5 while Genge gets an 8.5? Genge was solid in the scrum as always but another moment of stupidity in getting a yellow allowed France back in early in second half.

Agree with the general consensus around Pollock, too much gesticulating for my liking. Would rather have seen CCS brought on earlier.

England’s best attacking performance in a while. It was refreshing to see us play a running game with intensity and a shackles-off approach. I still think Borthwick and his coaching setup are failing considering the talent pool available to them. Doubt the RFU will see it that way.

Well played France . Deserved it in the end .

One lingering doubt with Bortgwick .

Why on earth take Spencer off and so early.

Why has it taken drubbings to give the players licence to run with the ball.

They looked a totally different team .

Had JVP not put up a box kick with 2 mins to go and we lost the ball , the result could have been different.

Let’s all hope and pray that the Ford era kick , kick , has gone into the bin .

Comment about Daly leaving to much space is a bit unfair. Numbers 13 & 14 were out of position for Bielle-Biarray’s first 2 scores leaving Daly with too much space to cover. He was good under the high balls and made some very good penetrating runs. Genge needs to be far more disciplined - to get yellow carded at that stage of the game and give away a penalty try was madness. Finally, when England had only a minute or two left at the end of the game they gave the ball away instead of making sure they kept possession. Instead they lost possession and gave away an easy penalty.

Re Pollock.

Gestures at French crowd pre match like the disrespecful idiot he is. After Freeman scores runs over to make more gestures at French fans distracting his own team with 3 mins left. Does one good thing with a turnover and then throws a 10% offload attempt with 30s left handing the match to France.

Surely its time for England to ditch the “good for the sport” nonsense, take him aside and have a few quiet but firm words with him?

This performance was obviously of a higher quality than the 3 previous efforts, and fair play to the players for rallying to the cause, but it asks as many questions as it answered, re selection and the style of play England aspire too.

Turning up on the last day of the championship when you have nothing to play for bar redemption, simply doesnt cut it in international sport.

If this England side were a Tennis player, they’d be Emma radacanu, not Novak Djokavic!!

I’d knock at least 2 pts off Chessum for not getting closer to the posts when scoring, especially when your goalkicker is having an off day & the score was so close.

Chessum changed the loose forwards as a unit and got through a mountain of work. His biggest contribution is his work rate and energy. English backs were out-played by the French but the forwards matched and outplayed the French. A match for the Six Nations history books!

A fair ratings except:

Daly, should be 5, a obvious weakness at the back

Itoje: should be barely 6.5, over rated

Cole: Should be at least 8.5, strength all around

Genge: 6, the weak link at the front row, a penalty generator

Pepper: should be at least 8, showed the French how it done at the tight

I have to say, this performance just confirmed that Borthwick has been playing the wrong tactics, with the wrong selections. . . . . and for that he needs to go, so we can get someone who has the experience to lead a team to a major tournament and win.

Borthers will fail to get the best out of this team, so it’s time to get someone that can and then any other coach would move Wigglesworth on from defence. He’s been a disaster this 6N’s.

Brilliant performance. The difference it makes playing with some bloody intent. Plenty of situations where England would have kicked in previous games, instead we looked to attack from deep and caused France problems. Rugby is a simple game, run hard, win the gain line and you're 80% there. Keep the ball, hit the line hard, shift the point of attack and put the defence under pressure. Poor discipline killed us, combined with JVP taking all the pace out of it, came on and went straight to box kicking everything.

I'm not going to get excited. We've been here before under Borthwick. This will be the third time we've seen a shift away from Borthersball when he's been under pressure after embarrassing defeats. Most notably the loss to Scotland a couple of years ago which led to us turning over Ireland at Twickenham in style then losing by a point in Paris. Inevitably by the autumn internationals, they will have gone back through a training camp and spent weeks drilling nothing but set piece and kick chase. Borthwick had no choice but to throw caution to the wind today, he was on the verge of losing his job. Now that he's saved it, he will revert to type. You can take the Borthwick out of the maul but you can't take the maul out of the Borthwick.

Overall fair ratings. Chessum at 6 was insane.

Two things. I think this game highlights Borthwicks flaws as a selector. Chessum at 6 transformed the balance of the back row and the lineout, we shouldn’t be going back to three sevens in the back row. Also Ben Spencer was ace and should have stayed on.

Secondly, I really quite like pollock, but his desire to get in on the celebrations for freemans score and goad the French crowd annoyed me this time. Mainly because he didn’t do much when he came on. Fin smith telling them both to calm down was excellent I thought.

Main takeaway though is that I can live with results like this, IF, that is the kind of performance we get. Question is where was that for the rest of the championship?

P.s best six nations ever.

Much better from England. They certainly have the ability.

There it is. The performance that we all knew was there, but for reasons only known to Borthwick, he put more trust in his spreadsheets than his actual players. What a difference Chessum makes at 6. I’d have liked CCS to have come on earlier and in place of Pollock.

Terrible campaign and you can ask why it took 3 poor performances to kick England up the ass, but a performance, despite the result that gives some hope.

Well done France and unlucky Ireland.

By the ratings one would say england won the world cup

Super match. Fitting that such a wonderful tournament went down to the last kick!!!

England played really well and showed they can play with ball in hand and attack. Not sure where this England have been hiding all tournament and it’s a bit of a concern that they showed up like this when effectively there was no pressure on them. Still not convinced about the coaching team as for me they should be installing a mindset to attack more and be less conservative. Also think defensively we are abysmal and too often beaten out wide and the discipline isn’t good enough. A new defence coach is required and we need someone to get this team fired up for games when there is pressure. Great tournament, shame we couldn’t help out a home nation to the title in the end but it wasn’t for a lack of trying

As an Irish person I think that England put in one of the best performances of the whole tournament. Fair play but I'm so frustrated at Ramos.