There is an amusing post doing the rounds on X, which is not about the England rugby team but neatly sums up their views.
“Nobody on LinkedIn has ever had a bad day,” the post reads. “Every setback is a ‘growth opportunity’, every firing is a ‘new chapter’. These people would describe the Titanic as ‘a bold pivot to submarine operations’.”
Ben Earl projected this vibe at the Stadio Olimpico on Saturday night, after England had lost to Italy. “There’s an element of pride because I actually thought we played pretty well,” he said. “There was a moment I thought there was only one team that was going to win this. If that game ended at 60 minutes, you’d say that was an unbelievable performance by England. Honestly, I am so buoyant with this team, we just have to win some games of rugby and we will.”
Earl, who won his 50th cap on Saturday, amassed 20 of England’s 118 carries in Rome
DANILO DI GIOVANNI/GETTY
Earl is a relentlessly optimistic guy, so all power to him. He fronted up after the 23-18 defeat, and is allowed to back himself, his coaches and his team.
However, his comments will jar with supporters who now have lost faith in Steve Borthwick, whatever the RFU has said about giving the head coach until July to arrest this slide.
Borthwick himself spoke like Earl when, in 2010, he captained England to an ugly 17-12 win against Italy in Rome. He said his team were “fantastic”, spent the next week defending himself, and when things did not improve he was dropped by the coach, Martin Johnson, later in the year. Earl is dumbfounded as to why any England fan’s faith would be wobbling.
“Because what, we’ve lost three on the bounce?” he asked. “England rugby should never lose a game of rugby, apparently. Just have a think about what this team’s achieved since Steve took over. We’ve gone third in the World Cup. We have won 12 out of 15 games. If someone asked us 15 games ago, ‘You can win 12 of your next 15 games [would you take that?],’ what do you think you would say? We’ve beaten the All Blacks for the first time in Twickenham since 2012.
Earl, consoled by Ben Spencer at full-time, is refusing to countenance any criticism
DAVID ROGERS/GETTY
“The noise is actually bonkers. It’s crazy because if anyone’s letting Steve down, it’s us. Pain now, joy later. That’s the way we have to look at it, because if we sit here and say, ‘This isn’t working, change again,’ we just won’t improve, and that’s what we want to do.”
Is the manner of the defeats not alarming, though, Ben?
“What do you mean by the manner?” Earl responded, before we explained that it’s the record defeats, historic firsts, the fact the team were 17-0 down in Scotland and 22-0 down at home to Ireland, lost both by a distance and then did not respond in Italy.
“I’m not going to talk about the last two weeks, because you lot have written thousands of words about it already, but this game, honestly, we were in one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played for 60 minutes,” Earl said.
“We brought the game plan to life and Italy won a couple of moments in the last 20 minutes to win the game. That’s Test-match rugby. That’s another lesson for us. Of course, at some point, you go, ‘How many lessons can you take?’ But I keep saying I’d rather learn these lessons now than in Brisbane in 2027 [at the World Cup].”
The players cannot lurch straight to doom, and Earl himself has been England’s best player under Borthwick. However, there is a danger that they gaslight their fans and therefore disconnect from the supporters they were so determined to build bridges with in 2024 under Jamie George’s captaincy.
The unfortunate reality is that Borthwick is an unpopular coach, the team have reverted to a rugby-by-numbers style only a mother could love, and, the clincher, have stopped winning. As triumvirates go, it is a brutal one for any sporting coach.
Read social media, or listen to the more balanced views of those fans who left Rome on Sunday having spent thousands to watch the dross England served up, take the time to email us after listening to The Ruck podcast, and most of them are tired of such consistent underdelivery in the Six Nations.
Earl dismissed any condemnation of Borthwick. “Steve gives us a game plan where I have complete, supreme confidence that we’ll win every game, and that’s not always been the case with every coach I’ve played under,” he said. “The game plan has worked for 12 out of the last 15 times, so the noise is wild. It’s crazy.”
Publicly backing the coach is absolutely fine. What many find difficult to understand is why England have collapsed. Why is Borthwick — whose selling point is his meticulous eye for detail — coaching such a sloppy team?
Borthwick has the full backing of Earl, who cannot find fault with the coach’s game plans
ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP/GETTY
What is Lee Blackett, clearly a fine attack coach, being asked, or told, to do? Why have England’s data-driven coaching team based a game plan on winning contestable kicks, which Elliot Daly described as “50-50s” post-match?
A fundamental pillar of their game is therefore uncontrollable, and so results flip on the bounce of a ball. If England have won bat-backs, they have been profligate with the “crumbs”.
In Rome they had ten 22 entries, scoring only 1.5 points with each visit to the “red zone”. In Scotland it was 1.2 points from 12 entries, and against Ireland 1.7 from another 12. Good club players are shrinking, not growing, in England shirts and suddenly look devoid of confidence.
Good leaders, too, are chronically ill disciplined. Maro Itoje, the captain, and Sam Underhill were both sent to the sin-bin on Saturday — taking England’s card tally for the championship to seven yellows, and two more for Henry Arundell that made a red in Scotland.
Six Nations cards England 7 yellow, 1 red
Wales 6 yellow
Italy 3 yellow
France 2 yellow
Scotland 2 yellow
Ireland 2 yellow
“We have not got a pandemic of yellow cards. We’re just not quite realising when ruthlessness goes to desperation or recklessness,” Earl surmised.
There is much you can criticise England for, fairly, right now. The worry is that if the players are not honest with themselves, set higher standards and respond energetically in Paris, they will never escape a 20-year cycle of short performance peaks followed by stagnation, then a scrabbled reaction for the World Cup.
Bill Sweeney, the RFU chief executive, was concerned enough to give the dreaded vote of confidence on Sunday, despite some of his union colleagues, and the squad, being bewildered by the negativity.
Conor O’Shea will feel the irony of helping Italy to install a proper pathway system, when he coached them ten years ago, that has delivered so well that it has called into question him and his employees, now he is the RFU’s executive director of performance.
Last week he was at Twickenham declaring that England’s troubles were overblown by a polarised media, suggesting they may finally hit a peak in 2035. Passionate, intelligent fans have heard this refrain for decades, and are sick of it and being told how to support the team and what to think.
If England pitch their slump as a bold pivot to their next growth opportunity, they will only delude themselves.