Jamie George had one blunt word for the way his team defended against Australia: “unforgivable”. England conceded five tries and 42 points, a record number in a home match against Australia, and the most in any Test against them in almost 20 years.
It meant that in the end England lost a game they should have won. Again. “There’s going to be some clips that are hard to watch back,” George admitted, “because we needed to be more physical, and make more tackles.
“It is a fine balance between closing up shop and trying to see out the win rather than attacking. We talk about being brave and courageous and that [Maro Itoje] try was exactly that. The system and the principle all works. We know it works but we didn’t quite get what we wanted out if it. Leaking 42 points at home is unforgivable. They got front-foot ball and then have some pretty good runners outside.”
Steve Borthwick was similarly keen to pick out the positives from the defeat. “It is a game we were in a position to win,” said England’s coach. “There were multiple times we put ourselves in position to go and win it and we didn’t. When you turn over that much ball, and make a game so unstructured, against a team with that much pace, you are giving them opportunities and we gave them far too many.”
Borthwick said his team had been disrupted by all the injuries they had suffered in the first half, particularly the one which forced off Tom Curry. “You lose a world-class player and it has an impact, Alex Dombrandt came on and played really well but clearly the balance of the back row changed.
“We took a few knocks and bangs, but we have to adapt to those things. I had to change things in that first half quite early, and then that continued through the second half.” Borthwick is still waiting for the medical report on Curry, but says it is unlikely he will be available next week against South Africa.
For the second Saturday in a row, Borthwick found himself describing how England had come “within the width of the post of beating New Zealand” as he tried to talk up his team’s progress.
“I am not accepting this is good enough, because we wanted to win and we were in a position to win, but we’ve talked about developing the attacking side of the game, and having the confidence to move the ball, and I think you saw that today.
“One of the big challenges of the England team over a long period of time has been the weight of the shirt, and I think it’s something we’ve worked to move on from.
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“I want to make sure the players feel the confidence to go out and attack, but clearly there were times there when we were just too loose. When you drift away from the gameplan it leads to more errors.”
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George’s focus was already moving on to the match against the Springboks next week. “We’re going to get ourselves right, we’re going to have a great training week, and we’re going to have a brilliant plan going into the game, and we’re going to believe in what we are doing, and if it is close in that game too we are going to continue to play with endeavour, and continue to play to win.”