{"id":335452,"date":"2026-03-08T14:05:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T14:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/335452\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T14:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T14:05:07","slug":"steve-borthwick-and-england-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/335452\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Borthwick and England team"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bill Sweeney has admitted England\u2019s recent Six Nations<\/a> slump has been \u201chugely disappointing\u201d but insisted the RFU remains fully behind head coach Steve Borthwick.<\/p>\n

England<\/a> went into the championship on the back of a 12-match winning run but successive defeats to Scotland, Ireland<\/a> and Italy<\/a> have triggered mounting criticism and raised fresh questions about the direction of the national side.<\/p>\n

Speculation has been rife since the final whistle of Saturday night\u2019s historic first loss to Italy that Borthwick\u2019s position might be under consideration by the union, with major question marks lingering over England\u2019s collapse in the championship.<\/p>\n

With England now preparing for a daunting final-round trip to France, RFU chief executive Sweeney acknowledged expectations had not been met and said the union would work with Borthwick and the players to address what has gone wrong and restore confidence in the team\u2019s trajectory.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a 12 match winning run, these past three results have been hugely disappointing, and we feel that just as much as everyone else,\u201d said Sweeney.<\/p>\n

\u201cSteve and his coaching team are working tirelessly to make improvements, and we remain fully committed to supporting them and the players as they face France<\/a> this weekend and then look ahead to the Nations Championship.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of that support is being open about what hasn\u2019t gone right during this Six Nations and making sure everyone has a clear sense of how we move through those challenges together. That\u2019s something we\u2019ll be talking through and working on in the days and weeks ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will work together to understand and rectify why we have been unable to meet the expectations and anticipation going into these games.<\/p>\n

\u201cEngland fans rightly expect a team that learns and grows through adversity, and we\u2019re confident this group will do everything they can to deliver that.\u201d<\/p>\n

With 18 months to go before the Rugby World Cup, Borthwick will need to turn England\u2019s fortunes around sharpish if he wants to avoid the same fate as Eddie Jones ahead of the last tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bill Sweeney has admitted England\u2019s recent Six Nations slump has been \u201chugely disappointing\u201d but insisted the RFU remains…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-335452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}