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'Worst since 2015': England compared to Lancaster era after 'being battered' by Boks

(Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

England limped to the end of their Autumn internationals with just one win from four tests as a 14-man South Africa coasted to a 27-13 win at Twickenham, heaping pressure on head coach Eddie Jones.

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After a disastrous Six Nations in 2021 and a third-place finish in 2022, questions over Jones’ rebuild of his 2019 World Cup final side persist.

After losing to Argentina to start the Autumn campaign, Jones’ men rebounded to beat Japan, finished fast to draw with New Zealand before falling heavily to South Africa for a disappointing November.

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A ten minute flurry against a 14-man All Blacks side last weekend saved what could have been a similar scoreline, coming back from 25-6 to tie the test. Outside of that, it has been a less than impressive showing from England.

The manner of the 27-13 defeat to the Springboks has English rugby fans concerned, with fans saying they are ‘devoid of ideas’ and will ‘make up the numbers’ at next year’s World Cup.

They were outclassed in ‘every area of the game’ and struggled to put points together when the Springboks went down to 14 men for the final twenty minutes, repelled multiple times from the maul and turning the ball over on the goal line.

The loss was described as the ‘worst since 2015′ when Stuart Lancaster lead the side to a pool stage exit at their home World Cup, leading to a clean out and the initial beginning of Jones’ era.

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Despite morale falling to extremely low levels, head coach Eddie Jones is still optimistic improvements are being made by his side who are ‘building a good base’ for a World Cup run.

“On results, we are not happy but I feel like we are building a really good base to have a really good go at the World Cup, a really good base,” he said.

“A number of young players got some great experience today. They will come back better players from that and we have got other players coming back to form, some of our more senior players and we are not far away.”

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Comments

4 Comments
o
ole 709 days ago

Thanks Springboks for not following the Rugby Championship's script of only playing for 70 minutes and then let the English back in with a draw, so the English won't sack Eddie Jones.

The only positive is if Eddie Jones gets sacked, NZR will then finally show courage and sack incompe ... incumbent ABs coach.

C
Chris 709 days ago

Be warned. We will not give up our cup so easy 2023, this Bok team is primed to hit some serious form next year. 💪 give Ben Smith another 4 years to moan about how bad we are.

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Flankly 2 hours ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

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