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Tom Hamilton, Senior Writer
Captain Jamie George said England’s 42-37 defeat to Australia was “unacceptable” as head coach Steve Borthwick was left “gutted” at their heartbreaking late loss.
It was England’s fourth defeat on the bounce, after they fell to the All Blacks 24-22 last weekend. This time around they suffered the defeat after 80 minutes ticked by, with Max Jorgensen scoring in the 83rd minute to swing a topsy-turvy match in the Wallabies’ favour.
England were left distraught by the defeat and have South Africa coming to town next weekend. George said there’s no need for a massive re-think, but did admit they cannot afford to ship that number of points.
“I think the system and the principle all works, we know it works,” George said. “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.”
Borthwick was left to lament a match he felt they should have closed out.
“Every England supporter and every England player or anyone associated with the team is gutted right now,” he 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 scored twice early on through Chandler Cunningham-South and were 15-3 up after 20 minutes. But Tom Curry was forced off injured, and from there the Wallabies built, and scored tries through Tom Wright and Harry Williams to go into the break two points ahead.
The second half was similarly hectic with Jeremy Williams crossing for Australia, Ollie Sleightholme striking twice for England, Andrew Kellaway then putting the Wallabies in front only for Maro Itoje to score and Marcus Smith to convert what England thought was the match-clinching score. But then Jorgensen scored to break English hearts.
Post-match, Borthwick confirmed Curry will miss the Springboks match next week.
“If you lose a world-class player early in the game, it certainly has an impact,” Borthwick said of Curry’s injury. “I’ll be waiting for the full medical report and understand where everyone’s at, but I think everyone saw the way Tom was down and he will be unavailable next week.”
And Borthwick will focus on eradicating errors as they prepare to face the Boks.
“If you look at what we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, we’ve come within the width of the post of beating New Zealand last week. The team played very well. In that sense, we came very close to beating New Zealand,” Borthwick said.
“I’m not accepting that being good enough because we wanted to win and we were in a position to win. And today you see again the team, we talked about the team developing the attacking side of the ball, talked about the team having the confidence to move the ball.
“I think you saw that today and you’re seeing that with the team. One of the big challenges of the England team over a long period of time has been the weight of the shirt and I think the players, it’s something we’ve worked to develop and move on from. But clearly there are consequences if you turn the ball over that many times, you’re not giving your defence much of a chance. So we need to improve on that.”
George added: “Fundamentally we’re all gutted with the result. I think there are certainly elements of the performance that we’re not very happy with either. That’s probably the thing that’s the most disappointing. But at the same time, no, like I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, it’s the easiest team that I’ve ever had to captain and when we say we’re going to go out and do something, we go and do it.
“And the way that people have brushed themselves off this week to get themselves prepared and in a good way for the game today was impressive. And we’re going to have to do that again this week. So, yes, the message is that we’re very much believing in what we’re doing. We just need to make sure we keep pairing up the good bits and allowing ourselves to put pressure on pressure.”