England’s leadership picking up the pieces after ‘unacceptable’ defeat to the Wallabies
England head coach Steve Borthwick and captain Jamie George.
England head coach Steve Borthwick and captain Jamie George were left fuming after suffering a late 42-37 defeat against Australia in their Autumn Nations Series Test at Twickenham on Saturday.
Borthwick admitted to being “gutted” by the result while George said it’s “unacceptable” that they conceded so many points.
The Red Rose held the upper hand in most departments and raced into a 15-3 lead early in the opening half but the Wallabies fought back bravely and held a 20-18 lead at half-time before staying in the fight throughout the second half.
England thought they had won the match when Maro Itoje crossed the whitewash in the 78th minute with Marcus Smith’s conversion giving them a 37-35 lead but the Wallabies did not surrender and secured victory via a converted Max Jorgensen try in the 83rd minute.
Second successive late defeat for England
It was a heartbreaking result for the Red Rose as it meant they suffered a late defeat for the second successive match, after losing 24-22 against New Zealand last week.
England’s next match is against the Springboks next week and although George said there is no need for them to divert from their game-plan, he admitted they cannot concede so many points when they face the world champions.
“I think the system and the principle all works, we know it works,” he said after the loss to the Wallabies. “Tonight it was collisions. Leaking 42 points at home is unacceptable and a large part of that is down to loss of collisions.
“They got front-foot ball, they have got pretty good players out wide who made us look vulnerable. It’s sticking to the system and making sure we get significantly better within that.”
Borthwick bemoaned missed opportunities and admitted the defeat was hard to digest.
“Every England supporter and every England player or anyone associated with the team is gutted right now,” he said. “It’s a game we should have won. We were in a position to win multiple times. We put ourselves in a position to go and win the game and we didn’t.
“When you turn over that much ball and make the game that unstructured against a team with that much pace, you’re giving them opportunities and we gave them far too many opportunities.”
As the scoreline suggests, this was an entertaining affair with both teams scoring five tries apiece but England suffered a huge setback midway through the opening half when star back-row Tom Curry was forced off the field due to concussion, after being knocked out cold in a collision with Wallabies counterpart Rob Valetini.
“If you lose a world-class player early in the game, it certainly has an impact,” said Borthwick of Curry’s injury. “I’ll be waiting for the full medical report and understand where everyone’s at, but I think everyone saw the way Tom was down and he will be unavailable next week.”
And Borthwick believes it’s imperative for his team to eradicate mistakes from their game ahead of the clash with the Boks.
“If you look at what we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, we’ve come within the width of the post of beating New Zealand last week. The team played very well. In that sense, we came very close to beating New Zealand,” Borthwick said.
‘We wanted to win and we were in a position to win’
“I’m not accepting that being good enough because we wanted to win and we were in a position to win. And today you see again the team, we talked about the team developing the attacking side of the ball, talked about the team having the confidence to move the ball.
“I think you saw that today and you’re seeing that with the team. One of the big challenges of the England team over a long period of time has been the weight of the shirt and I think the players, it’s something we’ve worked to develop and move on from.
“But clearly there are consequences if you turn the ball over that many times, you’re not giving your defence much of a chance. So we need to improve on that.”
READ MORE: Opinion: England sacked their coaching Donald Trump but have replaced him with Sleepy Joe Biden
