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The full Steve Borthwick Q&A transcript after latest England loss
By Liam Heagney at Allianz Stadium, Twickenham
It will soon be two years to the very December day when Steve Borthwick was unveiled at Twickenham as the England head coach successor to Eddie Jones on a five-year deal taking him through to the 2027 Rugby World Cup.
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That longevity gave him a sense of real security which enabled him to keep the media at arm’s length, to talk around the house and never feel the need to insightfully engage or to be accountable.
Finishing third at the Rugby World Cup 13 months ago only emboldened that approach even further but something has changed in recent weeks and instead of platitudes, Borthwick is attempting to properly answer questions.
It’s as if the penny has finally dropped that while he does have a contract that still has three years to run, a team can only lose so many rugby matches before it loses its supporters. England are currently in this tricky territory and next Sunday’s series-ending visit of Jones’ Japan is simply must-win.
Until Saturday’s final whistle confirmed South Africa’s 29-20 win, you had to go back to 2006 to find the last time that England had lost three home matches on the bounce. Overall the run of straight losses is five, or seven in the last nine matches if your stretches the sequence back to that horrible February day when they were swept aside by Scotland in Edinburgh.
These numbers aren’t healthy which was why, during a 12-minute, 14-question post-game media briefing with Jamie George, the head coach was asked if the RFU still believed in what he was doing and if he still had their full support.
He insisted that he had and that the current adversity would greatly benefit England the long-term, it’s just that it’s presently a very painful period.
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Essentially, he came out fighting for his credibility, defending the progress of his team and defending the coaching of that team in a climate where key personnel such as Felix Jones have unsettling quit the set-up. Here is the full transcript of Borthwick’s briefing:
Steve, is that another one that slipped away?
Borthwick: Yeah, it’s incredibly frustrating. I feel the frustration of the players, the despondent supporters. Whilst there is much to be proud and positive about, we want to win games and as we put ourselves in position to win the game, we’re not converting. These are challenging days right now, development days for us. It’s painful. We will work through this and we will make sure that we are a better team coming out of it.
It’s becoming a theme, getting yourself in positions to win the game and falling off. How do you explain that?
Borthwick: Firstly, over the last period of time, the Tests down in New Zealand, the Test we have played against very, very good teams and it is important to recognise just how good South Africa are. Double world champions, the consistency and the experience they have within their team means you have to be on the money every second of the Test match and what we saw particularly the last part, we had plenty of entries in their 22, we had plenty of opportunities to score, and there were just small moments, small lapses that in the magnitude of the game end up being hugely significant. That’s what we are working through and that is what we are working with the players to develop to ensure we are the team this team can go in the next few years.
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It’s five defeats in a row. What would say to England rugby fans who maybe aren’t seeing progress and aren’t patient?
Borthwick: The most impatient people, without question, are us, they are in the team, with the team. We want players and coaches and all management, we want everything to happen now. As you look at it, the transition of this team, if you just simply compare the two teams today, they had I think 15 players who were in the semi-final a year ago and they have kept that team very much together. Our team, we had a number of players finish after the World Cup and this last year has been one of transitioning a lot of young players into this England team which I think have an incredibly exciting future. It’s a transition in the way we are trying to play also. You can see when the team moves the ball, you see just the talent that we have and the pace that we have. What we have got to do is make sure we make all those moments count.
?? Cheslin Kolbe picked the perfect time to pick up the pace to score in the corner for South Africa to send the Springboks well on their way to the victory against England ?#Breitling #DefiningMoment @Breitling pic.twitter.com/IfJhWjivbc
— Autumn Nations Series (@autumnnations) November 16, 2024
Time isn’t something always afforded in professional sport. Are you confident you will be given time to turn these good performances into wins?
Borthwick: I am very confident that we are on the right path and I am very confident that I am working with a great group of coaches, a great group of players. I am very confident that we would be on a trajectory where we are moving along. We want things to happen now. It’s not happened now. We aim to put in a better performance next week against Japan when we are back here next Sunday.
Have you been given guarantees in that respect that it is a long-term project?
Borthwick: I’m not going to be talking about private conversations. What I think is more important is the feeling I get and the feeling I get from the RFU is one of absolute support and absolute belief that this team is going in the right direction and that is the feeling of everybody in the RFU.
Jamie, do you feel the team is going in the right direction?
George: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Like Steve elaborated to, of course we are disappointed with the results. We wanted to give the England fans three wins from three, of course we did, and if you look at the three Test matches individually there are definitely things of course we needed to get better. You look at today, I was really proud of the team in terms of the way they fronted up physically. Test match rugby a game of really fine margins and we created a lot opportunities against a world-class team that are back-to-back world champions for a reason. You speak to those guys, I was just in the changing room and they were saying they felt really under pressure, the felt the physicality of the game and that is a sign of a good team. What we need to do is make sure we find the fixes to be closing out those games and I have every confidence and belief in the players and the staff that we all do everything we possibly can to be a significantly better team come next week but also looking ahead to the Six Nations.
You went off around 50 minutes again, is that frustrating that you can’t help in those closing stages and is it a leadership void?
George: It certainly doesn’t leave a leadership void. We have leaders all the way across the field. If you look at the team that was on at the end, there was plenty of leaders in that team. If you speak to every player they will always want to play every moment of every game but the hooker jersey is an 80-minute performance across two players and when you have got the likes of Luke Cowan-Dickie or Theo Dan coming off the bench then the things they can add and I think you saw that with Luke Cowan-Dickie tonight.
With Japan and the Six Nations coming up, are you in a position where it is so close that you can continue exactly on the trajectory with the personnel that you have got or is there is a little bit of fine tweaking or pruning that has got to take place to really get this team into a position where they are killing off these big games?
Borthwick: There is always those changes that you need to continually develop. What is important is that the core of the game has put us in a position to get ahead on the scoreboard against very good opposition and we will improve to ensure that we do finish off those games but it is something that the central elements of the game are good and able to compete with the very best around.
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From an attacking sense, what changed, what went wrong in the second half as you could only score three points?
Borthwick: You have to credit they were a pretty good team we were playing against and if was a very, very tight game for long periods. There was some moments towards the back end of the game where I thought we had opportunities that we didn’t quite take and I want to make sure that the players understand the backing I give them consistently to show their skill set, the backing I give them, I have absolute confidence in them as players to make the right decisions, their ability to move the ball even in the tightest situations, even in the closest of Test matches. I believe our players have got a very, very good skill set and as they get more and more experience at Test level, I believe they will take those opportunities.
Results aside, are you happy with how the team is developing or have you taken some backward steps this autumn?
Borthwick: Clearly we want wins and we are all really, really disappointed that we have got those wins so far this autumn. We have one more game next week that we to make sure we get a performance and the result that we have all been working towards. We ae playing against very, very good teams and while there are big positives to take from it, they are also big learning days. These are painful experiences right now we’re going through. This adversity will ultimately be good for the team long-term, it’s just very difficult right now.
On that criticism, do you embrace it or protect the team from it as you build into the Japan game?
George: Again, we are as frustrated as everyone else. It’s important for us as players to take responsibility over the last three performances. When you look at it, look at the positions we put ourselves in across all three games and tonight in terms of the plan that is being put out there, when we play to the plan we are a very, very dangerous team . When we stray away from that we allow teams opportunities and that is exactly what happened this evening. So we all will be holding our hands up, we will be looking at ourselves and we will be making sure that we find the fixes so that we are ready to against Japan.
I know you weren’t on that this point, were there any thoughts to possibly go for the three points coming towards the end there to cut it down to a one-score game rather than kicking to the corner?
George: I haven’t spoken to Maro about it but I absolutely back his decision. We just needed to be more clinical. Again, we had a really good lineout play that we could have taken an opportunity to close out the game and we didn’t execute it so again that’s on us to make sure we are able to do that.
When you had a man advantage, the accuracy seemed to go at that point. Is there a reason for that, is there an over-riding issue there?
Borthwick: I would also say they are a very good team we are playing against and when you have that level of experience and understand when you have got to do on those circumstances when you are playing a man down and their line speed went up, their attack at the breakdown went up and they caused some of those errors. There were some moments where we could have moved the ball a little but wider and we didn’t, we attacked a little but narrow. Again, I will have a good discussion with the players about why we made those decisions.
Over the summer you lose two world-class coaches, Aled (Walters) who was a very positive voice in the environment and Felix who seemed to be on the track with the defence and now you have also got Kevin (Sinfield) who is not in camp all the time. How much of an impact is that having?
Borthwick: I am very confident with the whole management team we have coaching. Ultimately we are getting in positions to win the games which says there is a lot of things being done really, really well. Now clearly we are going against teams like today, the level of experience they have and in seeing those games out. As I said, these games, it’s tough right now, it’s painful, but we work through and we will be a better team because of these painful experiences.
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Being from Bristol, I was already shocked that we had appointed an old Bristol flanker who spent a lot of his career playing second division rugby as our defence coach. I was shocked further when I found out Joe has never been employed as a full-time defence coach and may have been given the job because he was Borthwick's housemate from Uni. When I heard he is still head coach of Oyonnax and doing this part time, I was flabbergasted... But when TNT Sports put up stats yesterday showing that Oyonnax have the 15th ranked defence in the second division of French rugby... I couldn't believe my f*****g ears!!!
... And by the way, our attack coach is Borthwick's pal from Sarries and Leicester who had about half a season's experience as a full-time coach before being given the role and was a scrum half who spent all his time box kicking.
Borthwick's coaching setup consists of his mates. There is no one there to challenge him or bring ideas from outside of his own methodology. It's all very comfortable and never going to work.