SIX MINUTES AFTER the final whistle in Twickenham last Saturday, England and Fiji were gathered in their own huddles. 10 metres separated them but how different the moods were in each of those circles.
In England’s, experienced lock Maro Itoje spoke urgently after another worrying defeat. There was pain etched on the faces around him after a humbling result in the place they call ‘HQ.’ Right now, it’s a headquarters of underperformance.
Meanwhile, the Fijians were singing a hymn together, having just congratulated each other on their first-ever win over the English. Many of them had their eyes closed, deep in gratitude. As well as being an excellent rugby team, Fiji are fine singers.
Simon Raiwalui’s side now bounce on into their World Cup campaign as the highest-ranked team in Pool C. They are genuine contenders to top the group ahead of Georgia, Australia, Wales, and Portugal. We will return to the Fijians’ brilliant story elsewhere.
But there’s no ignoring the fact that England are in a major trough. Dropping to eighth in the World Rugby rankings means being in their joint-lowest position since the standings came into effect around 20 years ago.
It has been a traumatic opening nine months in the Steve Borthwick era. He was supposed to take over after this World Cup but the RFU caved to public clamour and sacked Eddie Jones late last year even after repeatedly backing him up until very soon before that. Jones wasn’t getting great performances from the team, but it still didn’t make sense to cut him loose given their stance prior to that.
One wonders if Borthwick considered telling the RFU to get a caretaker in for the World Cup and that he’d take the job after. That might not have suited the union but it would have allowed Borthwick to start fresh with less pressure on his shoulders. All that has happened since has ensured a growing impression that he’s not the man for the job.
Borthwick is still a relatively inexperienced head coach. He has been around the game for pretty much his entire life but he only became the boss for the first time with Leicester in 2020. He made a strong start, winning the Premiership in his second season in charge. Still, it was a massive step up to take on the England job.
There has never been any doubt about his abilities on the training pitch but there’s so much more that goes with being an international head coach. Borthwick is evidently deeply uncomfortable with speaking to the media. His press conferences border on the comical such is his unwillingness to answer even the simplest of questions.
He also erred early in his time in charge when he reacted to England’s home defeat to Scotland in his first game in charge by lashing out at the work done by Jones, his former mentor.
“When I looked at the team in the autumn, when I measured the team and got all the data for the team, we weren’t good at anything,” said Borthwick. “It was as frank as that.”
It was possibly designed to relieve the pressure on him but it was misguided to make that statement publicly. It gave everyone a rod to beat Borthwick with if England didn’t improve. And they haven’t. They’re actually worse now than they were under Jones.
Let’s not forget that England suffered a record 53-10 hammering at home to France as recently as March. Humiliation is a strong word but that’s how it must have felt to the English players after that dire performance.
This World Cup pre-season gave them a chance to refresh but the performances over the course of the past month have been abject. A loss to Wales, an unimpressive win over the Welsh, a miserable performance in defeat to Ireland, then the low point of last weekend.
It’s risky to read too much into World Cup warm-ups but England’s performances haven’t just dropped off a cliff – they’ve continued in the downward spiral they were already on. Kicking the ball a lot can bring success in rugby but England aren’t doing it well nor are they combining those tactics with quality elsewhere. Their defence has become alarmingly poor.
The most eye-opening words of the weekend came from George Ford, who is back at out-half with Owen Farrell currently suspended.
“We’re playing the way we train at the minute, which is not good enough obviously,” said Ford.
“We understand that we need to make fewer mistakes. There’s an urgency that we need to fix it and get better. The way you do that is to be more consistent in training. We’re clearly not consistent in training, there are probably too many errors in training.”
This is admirable honesty from Ford but it’s also deeply concerning. When have you ever heard a team in any sport admit that their pre-season training hasn’t been up to scratch? Most of the time, teams are fighting to tell us just how well they’ve training, how great the buzz is in camp. England aren’t even pretending that’s the case.
The sideshow of Farrell’s disciplinary saga obviously didn’t help their preparations, while Billy Vuniopola is also banned at the moment, but England are not faultless in those cases. Their players made errors and justice was served. The English mistakes are piling up.
Last weekend, it was obvious how inhibited the players are becoming due to an apparent lack of confidence. Whatever skills they possess that got them to Test level aren’t coming to the fore.
Borthwick, meanwhile, must be wondering how good these English players actually are. The Premiership gets plenty of hype in the UK media and it can certainly be entertaining but the impression from outside is that it’s not good preparation for the brutal realities of Test rugby. England haven’t had a Champions Cup semi-finalist for three seasons in a row now. That suggests the Premiership has fallen behind the URC, as well as the Top 14.
So what next for England? The good thing is that they got a kind World Cup draw three years ago. They’re in Pool D with Argentina, Japan, Samoa, and Chile. While many people will expect them to struggle to get out of this pool, it’s still doable if they can be a little more solid.
You just know the Pumas are going to be at an emotional high against the English when they meet on the opening weekend. Argentina will expect to win that one.
England’s second clash is against Japan, who have attacking threats but have been poor in their own build-up. The Chileans are an exciting team who will have lots of neutral support, but England will surely have too much power. It might all come down to their final pool game against Samoa, who have improved and are a threat but remain beatable.
It’s likely to be fraught and Borthwick must be nervous about the next six weeks. Just getting out of the pool would be considered a relief from where they stand right now. The prospect of exiting in the pool must be frightening. When that happened in 2015, Stuart Lancaster and his coaching staff, including Andy Farrell, were jettisoned. That was on home soil of course, and the RFU only recently committed to Borthwick long-term but we’ve seen how they can swing in a short space of time.
Expectations have bottomed out so there is potential for Borthwick and England to surprise a few people, but right now the chariot is swinging very low indeed.
