Former England hooker Brian Moore has revealed he’s ‘very concerned’ by Steve Borthwick’s latest post match interview.
Even though Steve Borthwick claimed to have a good idea of his World Cup squad before the summer opener in Cardiff, the England head coach was left with numerous things to contemplate following a challenging evening at the Principality Stadium.
England showed promise in the first half, but their well-known wastefulness haunted them once more as they had 12 entries into the 22 without scoring a try in their 20-9 loss to Wales. The team’s performance drastically declined in the second half, echoing a familiar narrative of their struggles.
Borthwick’s interview after the game went viral for all the wrong reasons with some fans calling the England boss delusional.
“The aggregate of Borthwick’s utterings, and this was a theme he returned to several times, was that England had simply failed to take their chances,” wrote Moore in his column for The Telegraph.
“There is just one problem with Borthwick’s claim: what chances? Ok, if you want to be technically correct, and without entering into a semantic argument, in the first half there was a Joe Marchant clean break, and there were two lineouts close to the Welsh line.
” However, when the break wasn’t supported by a flood of supporting players and when you cannot say but for the final pass going astray you would have scored, it isn’t really a scoring chance. Similarly, your own lineout throws, where you don’t end up with the ball and either turn it over or give away a penalty, don’t count either.
“To use a footballing equivalence, it’s like claiming a free kick just outside the box was a scoring chance, even though you didn’t even get the ball past the defending wall, or you had a corner, but it didn’t beat the first defender.
“Try-scoring chances were a feature of the game, it’s just that Wales had five. They scored from two and had two others that weren’t taken by the slenderest of margins, requiring TV replays to help adjudicate. That was one problem.
“Another was the fact that when Marcus Smith was given front foot ball, and England began to pose more sophisticated problems for the Welsh defence, they created very little of solid note. To continue the theme of England problems, you can add the fact that whenever England started to gain a marginal advantage, and began to exert a modicum of sustained pressure, they turned the ball over, or lost lineouts on their own throw, or simply knocked the ball on.
“The last of these factors should make sobering reading for England. You will not win international games, even ones against teams featuring a raft of changes, if you lose the handling error count by 17 to 2.”
Who could replace Steve Borthwick at Twickenham?
4. Rob Baxter – 12/1
Rob Baxter, who guided the Devon-based club from the Championship to European champions in 10 years has done this largely with a core of players that have come through the academy at Exeter.
With this season’s club performance not at the level of previous years, it may be time for him to move on and into the Test game in the near futuree.
Although Baxter joined the England coaching team for the summer tour to Argentina and Uruguay in March 2013, he has no experience outside of Exeter. “I would be happy to have a chat about what the role is, how they see it working and what their plans and ambitions are,” Baxter said of the England job back in December.
“Unless you know what it is, it’s hard to say yes or no to anything. At the same time, I’m not looking for another job! I’m very happy here,” he added.
