Steve Borthwick confirms Rassie Erasmus’ ‘desperate’ England claim after ‘painful’ loss
Steve Borthwick watching England in the 2024 Autumn Nations Series
England head coach Steve Borthwick has admitted his side are “desperate to win”, but need to learn from these “painful experiences” in order to do so.
Borthwick’s side have now lost four matches on the spin, including Saturday’s dramatic 42-37 defeat to the Wallabies.
“We’re desperate to win”
The losses are made even worse when you factor in they held the lead for much of them too. Against Australia, they were 15-3 in front after 20 minutes, and also scored a try in the 78th minute to retake the advantage, and also led for large chunks in the two Tests against the All Blacks over the mid-year tour and the Autumn Nations Series opener.
Speaking to the media after the game, the England boss called on his side to “learn” from these experiences but also revealed his desperation to see his team get over the line in the future.
“There are some painful experiences right now,” he said. “For the team to get themselves into a winning position, I thought we showed real composure to get to that point, but what we weren’t good enough on the other side. It’s different to last week, as we just kept giving them opportunities.”
He added: “Whilst I don’t want to be stood here and saying off the back of a loss is we’ll learn, because we want to win games, we’re desperate to win games and we keep putting ourselves in positions to win them; but we have to deal with what we’ve got now, which is an experience we have to learn from first.”
“High calibre opposition”
Whilst the focus of England’s misery will be on the run of four-straight losses, it gets worse when you look back over a longer period of time.
Since the World Cup, they have only beaten two teams in the top 10, with those both coming during the Six Nations against Ireland and Italy, and they have also suffered defeats to heavy hitters France and New Zealand in that time too.
Commenting on the losing run, Borthwick was quick to point out the calibre of opposition they’ve faced and how they have only lost by “tight margins”.
“I think we’ve been playing some high calibre opposition over this last period of time,” he said. “And whilst we’ve been competing and the margins are incredibly tight, we want wins. I believe we have a group of players who can achieve that.
“I don’t think there’s a shortage of belief in the players, but we need a bit of composure at key moments to make sure we finish those situations we’re creating. I think you see a team that now has the endeavour and ability to score points, you’ve seen the development of some young players coming into the team, but ultimately we’re playing Test match rugby and it’s about winning at this level.”
Borthwick is starting to blood in a younger crop of players, with the likes of Chandler Cunningham-South, Immanuel Feyi-Waboso, Tommy Freeman and Fin Baxter all getting decent exposure at Test level, and whilst this experience will be invaluable to them moving forward, fans’ patience will begin to wear thin if things don’t change soon.
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This inexperience is beginning to cost them, too, and that was especially prevalent against the Wallabies. England raced into a healthy 15-3 lead after 20 minutes and looked to be in cruise control, but yet sloppy errors on both sides of the ball allowed the likes of Joseph Suaalii, Andrew Kellaway, Tom Wright and Max Jorgensen to run riot at Allianz Stadium.
“The first 20 was exactly how we wanted to play,” Borthwick said. “Then, there was a period where it went end to end to end to end, which is clearly not the way we wanted to play. You can’t gift a team with that many fast, athletic outside backs that many chances.”
He added: “This is going to be part of the debrief with the players about some of the decisions on the pitch. From that period from 20 minutes to 40, how could you have not given them the opportunities we did going into half-time, and at the end of the game where we’re up on the scoreboard then give them a turnover in the middle of the pitch.”
The back-to-back world champions now lie in wait for England, and you have to imagine they are licking their lips at the prospect of another win in South West London.
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