“Disastrous”, “humbling”, “chaos” offered a selection of pejorative terms to describe England’s 29-10 defeat to Ireland in Saturday’s World Cup warm-up match at the Aviva Stadium.
The largely abject nature of the performance would have been indigestible enough for the English palate, but Billy Vunipola’s upgraded red card following a ‘bunker review’ of his head shot on Ireland loosehead prop Andrew Porter, compounded the misery.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell, “to lose one player, Mr Borthwick, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness”. Putting aside the recurring tackling issues for a moment it was England’s kick-dominant attacking focus that perplexed their media.
The Sunday Times rugby correspondent Stephen Jones wrote under the heading ‘Disastrous warm-ups have left England stone cold’: “It is some feat by England, but this was the worst of the three performances in what has become a godforsaken summer series.”
He lamented the “powder puff” nature of the team’s forward play and posed several questions to try and put his finger on why England are misfiring so horribly. The headline over Stuart Barnes’s analysis read, ‘Potency was promised but it was just more clueless confusion from England’, the former international observing that England’s Plans A, B and C all involved kicking.
“If the structured English first half created any space for outside backs, it was, alas, wingers and fullbacks in green. [George] Ford didn’t dream of varying the shape and ambition of his vision. Kick, kick, kick and then kick.”
Gerard Meagher writing in the Observer wrote about the perplexing discipline issues before alighting on another problem. “Discipline aside, it is the lack of urgency about England that is most troubling. The ponderousness in possession. The fact that it is almost six hours since a back scored a try.”
He pointed to Ireland’s initial rustiness but then the capacity of the home side to go through the gears, concluding, “that is the difference between a well-oiled machine, fine-tuned under Andy Farrell’s watch since the last World Cup, and Borthwick’s race against time.”
Meagher later concluded when summing up a miserable run of World Cup warm-up woes: “It is becoming clear, however, that individuals are not the problem, rather it is a systemic failure.”
The Daily Express carried the headline ‘Billy Piles on Problems,’ Neil Squires’s piece focusing on the reaction of Borthwick and English captain Courtney Lawes to the sending off and a generally bad day at the office for the visitors to Dublin.
Headlines in The Sunday Telegraph were unambiguous, ‘World Cup chaos for Borthwick after Vunipola red card,’ and ‘New number 10 but same old story as Ford is stifled’.
Writing in the same newspaper, former Lions and Scotland player and coach Ian McGeechan pointed out: “You would have expected England to be more organised and up to speed with regard to their phase-play positioning, but Ireland taught the visitors lessons,” a reference to the fact that it was a first match of the season for many of Ireland’s frontline players.
The headline proclaimed, ‘More of this and England won’t get past quarters’, sounding an ominous note for the upcoming World Cup in France.
England’s 2003 World Cup winning coach Clive Woodward writing in the Daily Mail wrote: “Defeat was no surprise. Ireland were workmanlike and got the job done.
“Once again, England had nothing in their back-line play. The difference between them and Ireland behind the scrum was like chalk and cheese. England’s line-out did go well. But on almost every occasion, they went for a forward drive. You need to do more than that to beat a team like Ireland.
“I sound like a broken record, but England just don’t play with enough pace. Unfortunately, their performance against Ireland was pretty dull and uninspiring and another red card capped off another disappointing encounter. I’m really not sure where England go from here.” Indeed.
