England boss Borthwick concerned by a curious Fijian penalty stat

Steve Borthwick has raised concerns about the number of penalties Fiji have won in recent matches, but the England coach won’t be able to meet with this Sunday’s Rugby World Cup quarter-final referee to discuss the matter.

Following last weekend’s 18-17 English win on Lille, Samoa head coach Seilala Mapusua alleged that an unconscious refereeing bias existed whenever a tier two team plays a tier one side.

However, England boss Borthwick queried this allegation on Friday ahead of his team’s knockout clash with Fiji in Marseille.

The coach referenced the Fijians in some of their recent games – their Summer Nations Series Twickenham win over England and also their World Cup pool matches last month against Wales and Australia.

He then claimed that Fiji had won over 40 penalties in those fixtures while only conceding in the mid-20s and a search of the statistics proved him correct, the overall total coming in at 45 penalties conceded to Fiji’s 23.

In England’s August 26 game against the Pacific Islanders which was refereed by Jaco Peyper, the penalty count was 10-7 against Borthwick’s team.

Fifteen days later, versus Wales in Bordeaux on September 10 at the start of Pool C, Warren Gatland’s team came off worse on the penalty count – 17-9 – in a game that was handled by Matthew Carley while seven days later in Saint-Etienne, Eddie Jones’ Wallabies had an 18-7 penalty count against them in a match refereed by Andrew Brace.

By coincidence, Brace was the official in charge of last weekend’s close England shave against Samoa and Borthwick was asked on Friday in Aix-en-Provence if the clarification he sought after that game led to anything.

This was the query that opened the door for him to bring Fiji’s penalty record into the conversation ahead of this weekend’s last-eight clash.

“Post-game I talked about aspects of the game and would seek clarity and I did, I received clarity,” began Borthwick before switching his attention to Fiji. “In terms of Fiji, we talk about them being an incredibly strong side.

“I know some statements have been made around tier one, tier two. The situation I have is in the three games Fiji played against England, Australia, Wales in the last few weeks, they have won over 40 penalties, conceded mid-20s.

"So from that, you see a team that has a lot of penalties given to them. We have just got to control what we can control in the game and we will do that.”

Given that penalty count trend, would Borthwick be speaking to quarter-final referee Mathieu Raynal before kick-off in Marseille? No, was the answer. “It’s part of World Cup regulations you don’t speak to the referee in advance of the game,” he explained.

Owen Farrell is the England skipper tasked with on-pitch communications with the match officials. What will his approach with Raynal be? “Steve has just touched on it there, we have got to control what we can,” he said.

“If there is any sort of confusion you want to ask for clarity and want to ask what you can do better but in terms of what we can control, that is all that really matters to us.

"We talked about parts of our game now that are going to make big differences towards that. We hope we don’t have to speak to the referee.”