Borthwick must stop delaying and rebuild

WHEN Steve Borthwick took over from Eddie Jones as England head coach he said that he had inherited a team that “wasn’t good at anything”. We are more than a year on, and nothing has changed.

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That reality was rammed home in England’s pivotal game of the Six Nations in Edinburgh last weekend when they were outplayed in the second-half to lose 30-21 to a Scotland side which had made their own fair share of mistakes before half-time.

However, the Scottish glitches were nothing compared with the deluge of errors made by Borthwick’s crew over the course of the 80 minutes at Murrayfield.

It justified the lukewarm reception for their narrow opening wins against tournament tail-gunners Italy and Wales. Even so, England started the second-half trailing only 17-13, with Scotland in their sights as long as they made a marked improvement after the interval.

Cue English implosion. A Scott Cummings lineout steal, and a searing break by quick-witted sub Cameron Redpath – as he used his intuition to turn a blocked Finn Russell kick into gold dust – saw the fly-half ’s precision chip to the corner put Duhan van der Merwe over for his hat-trick.

However, just before a George Ford penalty trimmed the deficit to 24-16, it was a Henry Slade tip-pass to nowhere which started a domino effect of 15 English errors in a row between the 50th and 70th minutes which killed any chance of a Red Rose comeback stone dead. These mistakes ranged across the entire gamut of rugby union skills, and was damning evidence of England’s decline as an international force.

The golden rule at Test level is not to compound an error with another one immediately afterwards, yet England managed to do it 15 times in 20 minutes. Next came a knock-on from the restart by George Martin despite no Scottish challenge, and an Andy Christie turn-over penalty from a Ben Spencer grubber was blocked.