A fifth World Cup defeat in six against the Springboks has raised some difficult but necessary-to-address problems for Steve Borthwick
anyone would want to watch it all over againBut on a rainy and blustery night at Stade de France, these were the tactics deemed necessary by the England head coach Steve Borthwick and his players, and they very nearly worked.to shoot out and make excellent tackles, so effectively that South Africa for a long while were unable to get their powerful one-out runners in play, and had to wait until the 69th minute for the only try of the match as they gradually, painstakingly, reined the red rose in.
The other main tipping point was the replacement of the starting props Joe Marler and Dan Cole with Ellis Genge and Kyle Sinckler – the reconstituted England scrum immediately began painting the wrong picture, as the rugby vernacular has it, for the referee Ben O’Keeffe, and the penalties awarded to South Africa began to flow, and they included the Springboks’ nerveless winning kick by
The teams have met six times in World Cups now, the South Africans have won five of them, and remarkably the only try scored by England was by Will Greenwood in the solitary win in the pool in 2003 – also the year of Wilkinson and company landing what still remains the only triumph in the global competition by a European team.
The team led the combative Farrell to the exclusion of alternative fly-halves George Ford and Marcus Smith made a magnificent job of playing to the conditions, thanks to Elliot Daly, Jonny May and Freddie Steward winning the crucial aerial battles – whether that was repeatedly tapping the box-kicks by Alex Mitchell and Danny Care back on England’s side, or Steward fielding high balls put up by an initially rattled opposition.
We already know the former Ireland full-back Felix Jones will be leaving the Boks as defence coach and joining England in time for the 2024 Six Nations. It is not known if that means a change among the existing staff, although Sinfield has admitted life was tough generally for the squad during the summer warm-ups.
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