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A startling World Cup stat has Borthwick believing in blunt England

(Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

Steve Borthwick has delved into England Rugby World Cup history to illustrate how a team with limited try-scoring prowess can still massively achieve at the finals. Since taking the reins from Eddie Jones last December, Borthwick’s English side have been regularly criticised for its inability to score tries.

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Coming in France 2023, England had scored just eight tries in six matches – just one in each of their successive outings versus France, Ireland, Wales (twice) and Ireland again before they finished their Summer Nations Series with three tries in their defeat to Fiji.

This lack of creativity in crossing the whitewash more frequently extended into last weekend when their 27-10 opening-round victory at the World Cup came minus a try as all the points originated from the boot of George Ford via six penalty kicks and three drop goals.

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Despite the issue of four red cards in six matches understandably restricting England’s ability to create, the dearth of tries has still generated much commentary about the general bluntness of the Borthwick attack heading into his team’s next World Cup outing, this Sunday night’s clash with Japan in Nice.

However, the head coach has now countered this criticism of his team’s try-scoring record with an incredible statistic from England’s most successful period at consecutive finals.

Team Form

Last 5 Games

1
Wins
1
1
Streak
1
19
Tries Scored
14
22
Points Difference
-138
3/5
First Try
2/5
4/5
First Points
2/5
3/5
Race To 10 Points
1/5

England won the tournament in 2003 and they then went on to reach the 2007 final, history that was referenced in the lead-up to this weekend’s game with Borthwick emphasising a startling statistic about those two past campaigns.

“As I look at all the underlying factors around our game, do I see progress and do I have the evidence of progress? Absolutely. Did we get across the try line last week? No, we didn’t. Do I feel that the team played last week in the manner that was required? Yes, YES. I feel that the overall game is developing.

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“As I am sure you are well aware, the most successful back-to-back World Cups England have had were ’03 and ’07, won it and reached the final next time. Eight tier-one Tests and how many tries in the eight games? Four.

“So you get to this level, games are tight. Players have got to find a way to get an advantage one way or another and these players did an incredible job last week in finding an advantage (against Argentina).

“These guys are big players who rise to the biggest of occasions and I anticipate and expect that these players will find another way on Sunday and will rise again to the big occasion.”

Borthwick was spot-on with his grasp of history. In the title-winning 2003 campaign in Australia, England scored just three tries in their four matches versus tier-one opposition:

  • South Africa (25-6 pool win) – One try from Will Greenwood;
  • Wales (28-17 quarter-final win) – One try from Greenwood;
  • France (24-7 semi-final win) – No England try scored;
  • Australia (2-17 final win after extra time) – One try from Jason Robinson.

Four years later in their four games against tier-one opposition in France, England scored just a single try:

  • South Africa (0-36 pool loss) – No England try scored;
  • Australia (12-10 quarter-final win) – No England try scored;
  • France (14-9 semi-final win) – One try from Josh Lewsey;
  • South Africa (6-15 final loss) – No England try scored.
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Comments

11 Comments
B
Barry 461 days ago

Rugby is a different game now - I’m not sure those stats matter so much. Tries win games.

England are unbearable to watch. That should count for something.

F
Flankly 462 days ago

Defense wins trophies. To that extent Borthwick is right. Limiting Argentina to 3 points would have been more important than scoring 3 tries. The problem is that England did neither.

To put it differently, if you allow your opponents to score 25 points then you had better have a reliable plan for scoring 30 points. If you're saying your plan is 10 penalty goals and/or dropped goals then you should expect some skepticism.

If SA came out with a we-don't-need-no-tries story we might look at their record of preventing Scotland from scoring and give them the benefit of the doubt. Havng said that we tend to see pretty exciting tries from SA, so it's unlikely they will go there.

M
Mark 462 days ago

Borthwick grasping at straws is my immediate response to this article.
Delving into long redundant stats smacks of desperation tbh.
England don't need anymore analysis or stats.
They need to get their heads out of their arses and play what's in front of them

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JW 2 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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