England looking to ‘tidy up’ and prove they are a ‘different team’

Stand-in captain Courtney Lawes insists England are better than what they have shown in recent weeks and believes if they clean up aspects of their game they will be a “different team”.

A 29-10 defeat to Ireland at the Aviva Stadium was a difficult ending to a tough week for England that was littered with the distraction around whether Owen Farrell will be banned or not, with World Rugby appealing the Six Nations Rugby decision to rescind his red card.

To make matters even more difficult, number eight Billy Vunipola was given his marching orders after a high tackle of his own, meaning Borthwick is sweating on the availability of the two experienced players.

Red for Billy Vunipola. #IREvENG pic.twitter.com/JXSlw04M4V

— Jared Wright (@jaredwright17) August 19, 2023

Committed to proving their quality

Lawes admitted the loss is not ideal but insisted there were positives to take home and underlined that his team will not give up until they get it right.

“It’s obviously very disappointing,” he said. “The thing is if we just get certain things right in that game, it’s very different, it’s a very different game – and they are all things that we can control.

“But we have to be able to control them. There are obviously a lot of positives, which is great.

“If we tidy up a couple of areas, we’ll be a much different team and we’ve proved we can hang with the best as long as we get them right. But it doesn’t make it any less disappointing that we didn’t get it right.

“We won’t give up. We will relentlessly pursue the betterment of our team and that’s all we can do.”

Fiji challenge ahead

Meanwhile, head coach Steve Borthwick could not comment on the Farrell situation and is simply looking to minimise the disruption the saga has on his squad as the Red Rose welcome Fiji to their hallowed Twickenham next week.

“It’s always difficult to accurately evaluate that because it’s an unknown but it certainly hasn’t helped our preparation this week and we’re going to have to deal with it again this forthcoming week,” he said, referring to Farrell’s situation.

“We’re going to have to ensure we minimise any disruption and distraction of it to get the performance we want.

“We play against Fiji back at Twickenham next week and we want to make sure we get a win, we want to make sure we get an improved performance because winning is a habit and we want to make sure we start building that habit.

“The area we’ve seen we need to see more improvement is that conversion of opportunities in the final third.

“Do we want to see more progress? Absolutely. And that’s what we’ll be focusing our attention on over this coming week and beyond as we build into that first game of the World Cup.”

READ MORE: Steve Borthwick calls for swift disciplinary verdict after Billy Vunipola red