A brand of rugby as lumpen as it is unlovable
It seems almost flattering to characterise England as the ugly ducklings of this tournament. That would suggest they have some idea as to their identity, when in truth the picture is one of hopeless confusion. Ponderous, without direction, they are as robotic as the coach in his press conferences.
Kevin Sinfield’s primary function in the House of Borthwick is not as the kicking and skills coach, but as the human face of a set-up struggling to inspire any public affection. South Africa’s Rassie Erasmus said before this game that Borthwick “thinks like a machine”, and few could fault his logic.
Any head coach at this level should be capable, even amid worrying runs of form, of summoning a response that stirs the blood. In this tournament alone, Gregor Townsend and Andy Farrell have both managed it against England’s expense. But that challenge seems to be beyond Borthwick, who keeps producing a brand of rugby as lumpen as it is unlovable.
The mitigation has evaporated. For a while last year, England’s habit of playing the game largely in the air paid dividends in terms of results, but now everybody else has worked them out. There is no contingency, no ingenious adaptation, merely the spectacle of a beleaguered coach contemplating his options as if analysing a particularly fiendish spreadsheet. And the players, plainly, are not buying into a method so bereft of spark. Borthwick cannot even deliver on an objective to keep all 15 players on the pitch, with this instruction flagrantly disregarded by his two most experienced forwards.
From Grand-Slam contenders to peripheral characters
Pedestrian in attack, powderpuff in defence, and their own worst enemies in terms of discipline, England have an enormous pool of players from whom to choose and yet remain seemingly clueless about sculpting a genuine elite team. The Rugby Football Union has invested all its faith in Borthwick until next year’s World Cup, but this brutal Six Nations campaign has exposed that as a miscalculation. The sight of Itoje committing an amateurish slap-down at a maul, reducing his side to 13 men, was grimly emblematic of a side who have lost their way.