England captain Jamie George condemned his team’s “unacceptable” defensive performance in their 42-37 defeat by Australia, admitting they thought the game was won after the opening 20 minutes.
England are on their worst run of results since 2018 and Steve Borthwick’s side have now lost five straight games to ‘tier one’ opposition as they blew a 15-3 lead secured in the opening quarter. England would go on to concede five tries – including Max Jorgensen’s game-winner at the death – to an Australian team that finished bottom of the Rugby Championship.
England have only once conceded more points at Twickenham – also under Borthwick against France at home in the 2023 Six Nations – and missed 35 tackles, which undid all the positive work of the first quarter.
George defended England’s defensive system after the match.
“I think the system and the principle all works, we know it works,” George told TNT Sports. “Tonight it was collisions. Leaking 42 points at home is unacceptable and a large part of that is down to loss of collisions. They got front foot ball, they have got pretty good players out wide who made us look vulnerable. It’s sticking to the system and making sure we get significantly better within that.
“The blueprint of how we wanted to play was in the first 20 minutes of the game, I think we put Australia under a lot of pressure. Sometimes, in a Test match like that, you think the job is done. We took our foot off the gas. You have to give credit to Australia, they were very good tonight, but we can’t keep doing that. It will be a tough one to watch back.”
In a topsy turvy game, England established leads of 15-3, 18-10, 30-28 and, with one minute remaining thanks to Maro Itoje’s converted try, 37-35. Each time they contrived to throw those advantages away due to some incredibly sloppy play, committing 19 turnovers including the final Australian restart that Itoje knocked on. Head coach Borthwick admitted they were their own worst enemies as they suffered their first home defeat to Australia since the 2015 World Cup.
“Every England supporter and every England player or anyone associated with the team is gutted right now,” Borthwick said. “It’s a game we should have won. We were in a position to win multiple times. We put ourselves in a position to go and win the game and we didn’t. When you turn over that much ball and make the game that unstructured against a team with that much pace, you’re giving them opportunities and we gave them far too many opportunities.”
England’s task will not get any easier with the visit of double world champions South Africa next week. Flanker Tom Curry will miss the game after appearing to be knocked out while winger Immanuel Feyi-Waboso also looked to have lost consciousness.
Borthwick was particularly concerned by how he felt England went off script after flanker Chandler Cunningham-South crossed twice to give them the perfect start. “Clearly there are some things there that we were too loose,” Borthwick said. “I thought the first 20 minutes was exactly how I wanted to start the game and at that point it was 15-3. Then at that point we changed a little bit and we did not play we wanted to play for the next 15-20 minutes until halftime. It wasn’t how we wanted to play. So I think when you drift away from the gameplan it generally leads to more errors.”
