For England the sense of deja vu was inescapable on Saturday night. As Thomas Ramos lined up the 80th-minute penalty to seal the narrowest of victories for France, minds spooled back to Paris and South Africa’s Handré Pollard doing precisely the same thing in the World Cup semi-final. If the fact that they emerged on the right side of a thrilling denouement just a week earlier demonstrates the fine margins of professional sport, England could be forgiven for getting that sinking feeling once again.
But this one will not hurt for as long or cut nearly as deep. Optimism abounds for Steve Borthwick’s side. The World Cup exit was greeted with a degree of respect that a limited team had scraped their way to the last four but, on the evidence of their valiant defeat in France and thrilling win against Ireland, England have rediscovered themselves. They have finally found an attacking edge that went missing in the second half of Eddie Jones’s reign and their supporters are swooning again.
“I was stood watching, warming up, thinking that is the blueprint for this England team going forward,” the second-half replacement Danny Care said. “The pace, the power and the accuracy they showed, the fight to get back into the game – I’m really proud of that. Everyone better watch out because when this team is on fire, they’ll be very hard to stop.”
The turning point for this campaign – maybe for Borthwick’s tenure, too – came in the aftermath of the error strewn defeat by Scotland. The squad promised “unbelievably honest” conversations when they gathered in York for the second fallow week and it is understood that some senior players, even some of Borthwick’s staff, challenged him to allow more time to be spent working on attack in training. You could see the absence of it in the clunkiness at Murrayfield, the handling errors, the unfamiliarity and the lack of cohesion in what England were doing.
The focus up to that point had been to drill into the players Felix Jones’s new defensive system but for the two-week buildup to facing Ireland the attack was polished and the results were evident at Twickenham. Against France, having withstood a first-half onslaught, it was similarly electric as they fought back from 16-3 down.
“Our mindset since Scotland has been to really go at teams with ball in hand,” the fly‑half George Ford said. “Be a threat, ask questions, fire shots, be that attacking team, be on the front foot a lot more. I think you’ve seen that the last two weeks. We had to front up after that [Scotland] game. We had to make a choice. It was off the back of that game when we had to have a few honest conversations about things and decide what team we want to be.”
The transformation is personified by Ford. He was celebrating his 31st birthday on Saturday, winning his 96th cap, but he is playing once again like the teenager who burst on to the scene with Leicester. “The last two weeks I’ve just wanted to be closer to the line, I wanted to be more of a threat and flatter, then bring the other lads with us,” he said.
“Against Scotland, we were too deep off the line. When you are going at teams, getting on top of them and creating one-on-ones, creating speed of ball – the ruck’s quick, that’s when you get on a bit of a roll and don’t let teams recover. That’s when the best attacks come to the party. I had a look at myself and how I could influence that more.
“I feel like a different player on the field. Reflecting back, sometimes you can fall into the trap when you are playing in high-class Test matches and you have the responsibility of making decisions, managing the game and putting the team in the right areas. I went too far down that end of the spectrum.
“We definitely went to one side of the spectrum and that’s what the whole conversation was since that [Scotland] game; that we needed to shift the other way.”
Against France it was Ben Earl – yet again one of the standout performers on the field – and Ollie Lawrence giving the go‑forward that makes it so much easier for Ford to play flat. We saw it with Marcus Smith’s try, after Earl had made the break, but perhaps it was Tommy Freeman’s score, after quick hands from Ford and Smith, that gives supporters most reason for cheer.
So how would Ford sum up the new England way?
“Flatter to the line, running into gaps, running into spaces, creating one-on-ones, getting quick ball at the ruck and being at them. The penny has dropped in terms of what type of team we want to be and how dangerous we can be.”
Against France there were mistakes, too, and not the kind that Borthwick has repeatedly said would happen, the kind that can be forgotten about or doubled down on. Smith gave a penalty away for taking Ramos out in the air and it laid the platform from which France struck through Léo Barre. The overthrown lineout that was fly-hacked by Ramos was another costly mistake – Gaël Fickou was soon in under the posts – and though there is debate as to whether the TMO ought to have intervened at the death, Earl’s no-arms tackle was a blot on an otherwise fine copybook for the No 8.
The next challenge, as minds drift to the summer tour of Japan and New Zealand, will be to eradicate those errors. “If you look at points in that game we are still searching for that perfect 80-minute performance,” Care said. “But that never happens. In games against the best teams in those little moments where you just have to shut up shop or not let them score, find moments to just wrestle back the momentum or just take control when you need to.”
