{"id":343996,"date":"2026-03-13T10:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T10:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/343996\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T10:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T10:00:12","slug":"six-nations-2026-steve-borthwick-numbers-behind-england-coachs-nightmare-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/343996\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Nations 2026: Steve Borthwick – numbers behind England coach’s nightmare run"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lack of confidence. Too much kicking.<\/a> The weight of the shirt.<\/a><\/p>\n

All have been reasonably used to explain England’s sudden decline, but the simple fact remains that Test rugby is an unforgiving arena, especially in a highly competitive Six Nations campaign.<\/p>\n

It gets even harder when you have fewer players on the pitch than the opposition.<\/p>\n

Approaching the hour mark at the Stadio Olimpico, England led by eight points against an Italy team with 14 men.<\/p>\n

But 15 minutes later, England were five points behind on the scoreboard with two men of their own in the sin-bin.<\/p>\n

The yellow cards shown to Sam Underhill and captain Maro Itoje “hurt us badly”, Borthwick said,<\/a> the latest examples of indiscipline which have undermined England’s tournament and made them more vulnerable to attacks out wide. <\/p>\n

England have received at least two cards in every match so far. They have played 108 minutes – the equivalent of more than five quarters of rugby – with 14 men.<\/p>\n

Discipline has been particularly poor at the breakdown, with exactly half of the 44 penalties England have conceded coming in this area.<\/p>\n

Another yellow card against France this weekend would tie the record tally of cards across the entirety of the men’s Six Nations era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A lack of confidence. Too much kicking. The weight of the shirt. All have been reasonably used to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-343996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343996","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=343996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}