‘We weren’t brave enough’: England legend tears into Steve Borthwick’s men after South Africa hammering

Steve Borthwick survived England’s worst-ever Six Nations campaign by convincing his employers at the Rugby Football Union he had “clear plans in place” to correct the failings.

An RFU review into their fifth-place finish demanded improvement in “discipline, execution of opportunities and making the most of key moments”. It concluded that those issues were already being addressed.

In Johannesburg on Saturday evening, it was not apparent. England were hammered. Their discipline, in a fifth straight loss, was dreadful. Their game lacked accuracy, cutting edge, and any sort of control.

South Africa had not played for eight months. They lost captain Siya Kolisi and enforcer Eben Etzebeth on the day of the match and star prop Ox Nche just 10 minutes into the game. They still won at a canter.

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“We weren’t brave enough”

We now have a better understanding of why ITV felt justified in relegating this Nations Championship opener from its main channel in favour of repackaged clips from quiz show Tipping Point.

This was something else we had seen before. On repeat. In Edinburgh, in Rome and at Twickenham, where Ireland ran amok.

“You’ve got to go and be brave to try to win in South Africa,” Danny Care, the former England scrum-half, told ITV4. “Unfortunately, we weren’t brave enough.”

England were 17-0 down after 12 minutes and ended up shipping seven tries. They conceded twice as many penalties and gave up two players to the sin bin.

That makes 10 yellow cards and one red in six games. Let that sink in for a moment.

“England’s discipline again is an absolute Achilles’ heel,” Care said. “That’s over 100 minutes of play now in six matches that England haven’t had 15 men on the field.

“They’ve conceded 95 points in that 100 minutes. So over a full Test match, they’re playing with an arm behind their back. They really are. You cannot expect to win Test matches against the big teams like that.”

They could not even reach for the old excuse of being at the end of a long season whilst their southern hemisphere opponents, at the start of theirs, are fresh.

Ireland won in Australia, Scotland won in Argentina, and France very nearly knocked off the All Blacks in New Zealand.

England had the most difficult task, in fairness. The Springboks are the world’s best by a mile, and England had not won at Ellis Park since 1972, when John Pullin captained them to their one and only victory there.

Yet the Wallabies were faced with the same opponent and an even heavier weight of history the last time the Springboks played at their spiritual home. They overcame those odds.

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No repeat of Wallabies fiasco

Mention of which takes us to Erasmus’ half-time team talk. The Boks switched off for only six minutes all game, and those were directly before the break, when England scored twice to peg the margin back to three points.

Quick as a flash, Erasmus got into his team, reminding them of the Aussie loss last August when they let slip a 22-0 lead as Harry Wilson’s men scored 38 unanswered points.

“We did have flashbacks,” the coach admitted. “It’s easy to say after you win that you learn from mistakes, but the chat at halftime was definitely: ‘Boys, we’ve been here before, and we know how it feels if we don’t rectify things in the second half’.

“We had to be really honest with one another at halftime, but luckily we had that game last year, and we could rectify things during the half-time chat.”

What followed was what learning from the past should look like. It bore no resemblance to England’s response to the Six Nations,

The Boks cranked up the power, led by the seemingly indefatigable Jasper Wiese. England were blown away, shut out of the contest, the marginal gains of Paris given back. In terms of sheer physicality, it really did resemble men against boys.

“England didn’t really show us anything,” said David Flatman, who can find a silver lining in most clouds. “England were dominated. There was no area of the game they won on points. There was no area where they gained parity.”

England’s ruck ball speed slowed to the point of being useless, their kicks were too inaccurate to be contestable and, with Tommy Freeman and Guy Pepper yellow-carded within a minute of each other, they finished with only 13 players.

The Boks did not let up. With three minutes left, they were awarded a penalty and opted to scrum. They had already scored 28 points in the half.

With the clock two minutes into the red, they continued to tear into England, determined to stick a half century on their favourite prey.

Jesse Kriel appeared to do that, crossing for try number eight, only for it to be called back for an infringement. A small mercy for England but not one that changes the fact that this slump cannot be allowed to continue.

“That’s five losses in a row now; it can’t be six or seven, it really can’t,” said Care. “Nothing other than England winning the next two games for me is acceptable.

“The Six Nations was the worst Six Nations in history; that wasn’t acceptable. If they play well against Fiji and go to Argentina and win, then I think you’ve taken the learnings.

“If we don’t, then I worry there are a lot of questions that are going to be asked again.”

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