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Steve Borthwick is a man of character in an age that prefers to reward personality. Try as he might to explain England’s latest collapse, to reassure supporters that a corner will be turned, it was a failure in grasping the gravitas of a seventh defeat in nine matches in a manner that is now his side’s trademark. It was left to his predecessor turned pundit, Eddie Jones, to sum up England’s plight far more adroitly in only four words when asked how he would have reacted if he were in Borthwick’s position: “I’m glad I’m not.”
It is a measure of Borthwick’s character that he chose not to turn on the referee, Ben O’Keeffe, for some questionable decisions against his team during the period in which Ireland scored 22 unanswered points. Borthwick pointed instead to his side’s indiscipline as they let a 10-5 half-time lead slip through their fingers. “That’s something that needs to be improved this week,” was about as close as he came to chastising his players for capitulating.
He was offered the opportunity to blame his side’s conditioning – or lack of it – as he alluded to in the autumn, but instead started talking about how his side lost a couple of crucial aerial contests rather than highlighting how he is still without a head of performance and will be until the end of the season.
Again, England’s bench was ineffective. Chandler Cunningham-South was not alone in making mistakes – it is just that his were conspicuous – but, rather than lament the inability of his replacements to contribute, Borthwick claimed that their problems started earlier and spoke of “execution factors”.
It is in moments such as this that he most reminds you of Stuart Lancaster. Another England coach whose character cannot be questioned but who has just been shown the door by Racing 92, another excellent technician who has struggled in a top job again. Both have habits of drilling down into the granular detail of defeats at a time when supporters want to be told why they should keep believing. “There’s execution in attack, execution in defence and there’s execution in the kicking game,” Borthwick said. “And in some key moments it was a little bit off where it needs to be to win these Test matches.”
Most significantly, it is his repeated blaming of England’s inexperience that will both worry and infuriate supporters. Worry, because there are limits to what Borthwick can do about it in the space of a week, even if Jamie George’s return to fitness is a welcome boost. That England welcome France to Twickenham will shine a spotlight on the fact that most of the players Borthwick might like to bring into this side are unavailable to him, plying their trade in the Top 14.
And if Borthwick is going to move Marcus Smith to full-back and start Fin Smith or Ford then France is the game in which to do it given their propensity to kick long but for this fixture two years he dropped a bombshell at fly-half by omitting Owen Farrell and Les Bleus ran riot in a 53-10 victory.
Infuriate, because of the resignation with which Borthwick keeps coming back to the theme of inexperience. It felt significant that, all week, Borthwick and his charges had talked of journeys, of processes, of wanting to win. No one expressed any genuine confidence that they would and if it is understandable to want to avoid bullishness on the basis it does not take much to be interpreted as hubris – particularly if you are English – again conviction was lacking in the final quarter.
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All the more infuriating is the implication that experience guarantees success. The idea that progress is guaranteed with the benefit of experience. After last year’s Six Nations England were on an upward curve but there was always a nagging suspicion that maybe they had reached the outer limits of their potential. There is no guarantee that they will improve in time. To put it another way, it is misguided to believe that success cannot be achieved without experience. The France side that won the 2022 grand slam by brushing England aside in Paris began that match with 401 caps. The England XV that started in Dublin on Saturday had 568.
In keeping with their head coach, this England side show an abundance of character. For the first half they carried out the gameplan perfectly, disrupting Ireland, striking when behind enemy lines and defending resolutely. You wonder if Borthwick’s insistence on a horses-for-courses approach for each match does not help, however, because the opposition will eventually figure out a way to combat it and England seem too wedded to their initial plan to launch a counter of their own. But you need only look at Tom Curry, hobbling on to the end, as evidence, or the crushing disappointment etched on the players’ faces when fronting up to discuss their latest defeat. The worry is that in the modern world, character only gets you so far.
