The good news is that England are taking the positives. Again. It may be seven defeats in nine games, but did you see the way they fought for a losing bonus point with the game gone? How about how the tweaked defensive system frustrated Ireland – until it didn’t. Remember, of course, that the defending champions are a great team; five points is no difference at all, really. What a learning experience this will prove to be.
Play that tape, Steve. “That was a Test match where, for large parts, there wasn’t much in it,” England head coach Steve Borthwick said. “I think this group of players is building and is going to be a very, very good team.
“Ireland are such an experienced team and have been world class for so long – it was a tough Test match and that experience showed in the third quarter. We gave them field position and scoreboard pressure in a critical period. But I am very proud of the way the players attacked the game in the first half and how they came back to score a couple of tries to get the bonus point.”
Someone fetch Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. Since stunning Ireland at Twickenham last year, excluding the two wins against Japan, it is seven defeats from seven for England by an average margin of fewer than five points. It is harder and harder to buy their seemingly unwavering belief in the system and strategy that is delivering consistent flaws.
For 45 minutes in Dublin, England were very good. They hassled. They harried. They hunted. The bold back row selection delivered at the breakdown; each contestable kick seemed to come back England’s way. At the interval, it seemed as if Ireland had thrown plenty of punches yet landed just one.
But like all champion sides, Simon Easterby’s team know how to seize the moment. With the game going against them, they found ways to pivot: attacking Cadan Murley and the rest of England’s backfield with varied kicks, lifting the tempo and finding fissures in the defence. With Sam Prendergast showing his youth, Easterby could call for a potential British and Irish Lion in Jack Crowley at fly half; injury may be the only reason that Dan Sheehan was on the bench but his arrival also felt significant. Ireland’s bench had proven Test performers; England’s, quite strikingly, did not.
And so the game swung. This increasingly feels like a team that are at their best playing to a prescribed plan, unable or perhaps unwilling to think on their feet as fatigue grows. The players talk with regularity of Borthwick as a master schemer, and that he has instilled systems to put them in winning positions, but his players appear incapable of achieving much beyond that. “I can see a team starting to develop within this group,” Borthwick claimed again in Dublin. It is now a period of pretty much four years in which he and his predecessor have been promising that England will eventually come good.
They are clearly not a bad team. They have a great many admirable qualities; the squad remains closely bound. It is a long time now since they were played completely out of a contest. Yet Borthwick now has a losing record as head coach. If there is no shame in losing to Ireland at the Aviva, England do not seem to have the depth required to match the top sides in the world.
Ireland’s 22 unanswered points came amid a familiar spell of silly errors and penalties. “We were in a commanding position and the lads came in and there was a real energy, a real buzz, about coming out in the second half,” full-back Freddie Steward outlined. “The key message was discipline – which we didn’t do in the first 10, 20 minutes [of the second half]. It’s an easy game when you don’t get that right.”
Borthwick refuted suggestions that his bench had been to blame, pointing to the fact that the collapse largely came before sweeping replacements had been made. It is hardly an encouraging argument. While on paper punchier and full of promise, an 81-cap unit showed that inexperience; surely there is cause for a George Ford or Elliot Daly to redress an imbalance.
Ireland’s reliance on a handful of ageing individuals is a worry for the future but in the present, it provides a point of difference. For those coming through – like Prendergast, or young tighthead Thomas Clarkson, who may be in line to start in Scotland after Finlay Bealham’s injury – there must be great security in looking over at weathered faces who have been there and done it all.
England do not possess such certainty. This is a long period now in which, run to the 2023 World Cup aside, they have been an unsuccessful team. Players becoming senior within the set-up do not possess significant reserves of winning experience upon which to draw. Lose next week and another Six Nations will come and go without a title challenge.
Thundering down the track to Twickenham next week come France; those on the pitch in the 53-10 drubbing two years ago will need no reminding of the power, pizzazz and poise with which Fabien Galthie’s side can play. Borthwick does not intend to address that defeat directly this week – “the context is completely different” – but it serves as a great illustration of how quickly they will accelerate away from England if the hosts get it wrong.
Those who have experienced either Toulouse or Bordeaux in the Champions Cup this year have more recent scars. “There’s no questioning that the French have got that offload game, that attacking game,” Steward, part of an 80-12 Leicester defeat to Toulouse a fortnight ago, said. “They are the full package so it’ll be a challenge for us.
“We keep saying it but the challenge is that 80-minute performance. We started the game really well and slipped off so the challenge next week will be to continue that.”
