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Kiwi broadcaster won’t write England off before World Cup
By Finn Morton
England fell to another disastrous defeat under coach Steve Borthwick at Twickenham on Saturday afternoon, but a New Zealand broadcaster isn’t ready to “write them off” before the World Cup.
Following the departure of former coach Eddie Jones, England started their new dawn under Steve Borthwick with a disastrous run of five losses from six starts.
While the English were able to turn their fortunes around with a hard-fought 19-17 win over Wales earlier this month, their last two Test matches haven’t gone to plan.
England were beaten, badly, by World No. 1 Ireland at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin earlier this month. But, as we now know, the worst was yet to come.
Returning home to face Fiji in their final warm-up Test before the Rugby World Cup, England raced out to an early lead after a try to wing Jonny May inside the opening 10 minutes.
But the Flying Fijians came alive after the break, and scored three tries to England’s two during the second term. Fiji ended up beating England for the first time 30-22 on Saturday.
Many England fans are both concerned and low onconfidence ahead of the Rugby World Cup. The results just aren’t there, and haven’t been for quite some time.
But Kiwi scribe and broadcaster James McOnie argued that England has “a lot of world-class players” within their ranks.
“You write them off at our peril really,” McOnie said on Weekend Sport With Jason Pine.
“They’ve still got a lot of world-class players: Courtney Lawes, Maro Itoje, (Owen) Farrell comes back into the mix, (Manu) Tuilagi is incredible.
“I actually think Marcus Smith, the reserve, reserve first-five, is the player they should build the team around but (Steve) Borthwick risk-averse and he’s gone full conservative.
“A lot of English fans are saying this is the house that Eddie Jones built, he created this mess, and look where we are.”
Coach Borthwick remains “confident” that England have the personnel they need to succeed, but supporters aren’t as optimistic.
Former England playmaker Andy Goode tweeted ‘#Borthwickout’ after the eight-point defeat, and that post had more than 1,300 likes, almost 170 reposts and 253 comments at the time of writing.
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Latest Comments
Totally agree. I thought SA were quite poor by their usual standards but in fairness to England they fronted up well and made life difficult for them.
Freddie Steward at fullback is literally the best 15 under a high ball in the world, he's a freak... But he's also probably the slowest professional fullback in world rugby. He shouldn't be there and I think SB may now realise that too. Steward against Kolbe and Williams was a painful watch.
Our entire attack depends on Marcus Smith. If he ever gets injured we're screwed haha. Weirdly in the second half Smith didn't receive the ball much, we started playing off 9 a lot with the centred and forwards crashing it up. He's a one man attack plan though and he's doing a good job of making scorelines look a lot better than they should. If you take Marcus out, we're not scoring tries. The attack past ten is flaccid and dead.
Go to commentsRidiculous and biased ratings. Rogers, Morgan and the front row apart, all other ratings inflated by 2 or 3 points in some cases.
Winnett is dreadful. He is too small and cannot defend. His positional play is good but size matters! For me, Rogers is the answer at 15.
You can read the same for Thomas. For me, make him a 10 and get Cardiff to play him there or move him to a Region that will do this. James has to be the 12 moving forward. When he came on, although at 13, his had physical presence and looked as if he belonged there.
Murray will come good, after all, he is still under 10 games played for region and country and is still learning the ropes.
Backrow balance still not right and Wainwright need to get off the pies!!
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