What is the best England could have expected from their final Test of the year? Probably something like this. But, really, this was the proverbial game they could not win.
It has been tempting, as it always is with England, to cry crisis at every opportunity, especially this autumn as that losing run stretched out like a man on a rack. But it is hardly stretching a point, either, to observe that only the slightest adjustment to what actually happened might have conjured a far healthier picture. That hit post at the end of the All Blacks game, that late drama against Australia – tweak those and this campaign might even have been considered a success.
The pig-headed will insist that victory is everything in international rugby, which is fine, but such a zero-sum attitude overlooks the inconvenient truth that international rugby is far, far more competitive than it has ever been. South Africa are clearly the best side in the world at the moment, and even they have lost twice this year, one of those at home. Meanwhile, England should be beating Australia, but blink against a team such as that, and you will be punished.
England were never going to lose this one. How Steve Borthwick must wish they could have played Japan at the start of the month, rather than the All Blacks. Instead of a consolation romp long after the meat of the campaign had passed, this might have served as a heartening limber-up, simultaneously resetting the ledger of consecutive defeats, a lifting of pressure that might have helped, for example, a late penalty hold its line at the sharp end of the next match.
We all must work, though, with what we are given. Which is another way of espousing the old cliche beloved of sportspeople, that we can only play what is in front of us. We should not forget, either, what was in front of England here.
Japan brought 211 caps’ worth of experience to the party, which puts them at the very greenest end of Test rugby’s spectrum of experience. The script might have weighed heavily with the threat of Storm Eddie, but Japan’s coach, so familiar in these parts, was not, it turned out, here to torment Borthwick, his former protege.
Eddie Jones is a disruptor. It became increasingly obvious during his unusually long spell in charge of England that without disruption he is lost. Before his England tenure, the longest he had remained in the same job was four years.
One could argue his biggest error with England was trying to convince us – not to mention himself – that he simply had to rebuild an England team he had just taken to a World Cup final, in 2019, as the youngest side to make one in the professional era. But it seems he could not help himself.
Casual observers may think of Japan as the exhilarating team of the 2015 and 2019 World Cups. Whatever the status of the 2023 squad, clearly less of a threat than their immediate predecessors, there was never any doubt when Jones came in that he would consider this a rebuild and then some. Sure enough, he has cleared the decks, which must put into context England’s victory.
Given England’s set-piece dominance, winning almost as much lineout ball on Japan’s throw as Japan managed to win themselves, one might argue a nine-try win should be the least of their expectations. More concerning would be the two tries conceded, exposing as they did the ongoing kink in the defensive structure, which has quickly morphed from a mooted strength under the previous defence coach, Felix Jones, to a liability that has cost England more than just those two tries.
The new defence coach, Joe El-Abd, will now have time to go away and come up with a system more his own than the one he has inherited. Meanwhile, the positives of this campaign may percolate further too – the two Smiths at fly-half, the Northampton triumvirate in the back three, who combined so sweetly here and elsewhere this autumn.
What is lacking is a hardness, a ruthlessness, but such qualities are hard to come by anywhere in an international arena populated by talented teams who can all beat each other. One may argue the only side who really boast that ruthlessness are, yes, those South Africans. That is why they are the best in the world, and why everyone else seems to be struggling perpetually on the verge of a crisis. England included. England especially.
