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Tom Hamilton, Senior Writer
England head coach Steve Borthwick says he has the full backing of the RFU despite the team being on the worst run in six years after they fell 29-20 to South Africa on Saturday at Twickenham.
England’s autumn has seen them lose to the All Blacks 24-22 and the Wallabies 42-37, before then falling to the Springboks on Saturday. It means England have lost six out of the last seven Tests, and have been defeated in five matches straight for the first time since 2018.
But despite this losing run, Borthwick is adamant the team is heading in the right direction.
“I’m very confident that we are on the right path and I’m very confident that I’m working with a great group of coaches, a great group of players,” Borthwick said. “I’m very confident that we will be on the trajectory that we’re moving along.
And when asked if he’s sure he has the backing of the RFU, Borthwick answered: “I’m not going to be talking about private conversations here. I think what’s actually more important is the feeling I get. The feeling I get from the RFU is one of absolute support and absolute belief that this team is going in the right direction. That’s the feeling I get from everybody at the RFU.”
England captain Jamie George echoed Borthwick, saying: “I think, like Steve elaborated too, of course we are disappointed with the results. We wanted to give the England fans three wins for three. I think if you look at the three test matches individually, I think there are definitely things that of course we needed to get better.
“You look at today, I was really proud of the team in terms of the way they fronted up physically. Test match rugby is a game of really fine margins. I think we created a lot of opportunities against a world-class team and back-to-back world champions for a reason.
“What we need to do is make sure we find the fixes to closing out those games. I have every confidence and belief in the players and the staff that we will do everything that we possibly can to be a significantly better team come next week but also looking ahead to the Six Nations.”
But the feeling of improvement in the face of these defeats was not echoed by former England international Ugo Money.
“It’s not far off a crisis,” Monye said on TNT. “We’re going to end up this Autumn Nations one out of four. That’s awful. When we look at the end of this year, we’d have won four out of 10 matches. For a team that wants to win a World Cup, that was in a World Cup semifinal, that was in a World Cup final the one before — this is so sub-standard from where we expect our team to be.”
Borthwick, though, said he feels that this tough patch will ultimately be the making of this group.
“I think that clearly we want wins and we’re all really, really disappointed we haven’t got those wins so far this autumn,” Borthwick said. “We have one more game next week and we want to make sure we get a performance on the result that we’ve all been working towards. We’re playing against very, very good teams and there are big positives to take from it.
“There are also big learning days. These are painful experiences right now we’re going through. I think this adversity will ultimately be good for the team long term. It’s just very, very difficult right now.”