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You feared for Steve Borthwick going into Saturday. The underwhelming defeat to Scotland had dented his credentials and devalued the currency of last October’s bronze medal finish at the Rugby World Cup.
Another dispiriting loss and the increased chance of a fourth successive two-wins-from-five Guinness Six Nations campaign – the second on Borthwick’s watch – would have left him vulnerable to accusations that he doesn’t know what he is doing.
Come full-time at Twickenham, all that negativity had been flushed away. England had sparklingly gone toe-to-toe with the supposed world’s best Irish.
The atmosphere at English rugby HQ was also inspiringly raucous rather than its muted vibe of these past few years. And then came the Hollywood finish, Marcus Smith, the kid with the movie star moves, whisking over the winning drop goal and igniting pandemonium.
What made the difference, Steve? “Three things. One, the intensity that the players had from the first minute to the last minute. I thought that was a step forward and that has got to become something that is a trademark of this team, the intensity with which they play.
England
Ireland
“The second thing was tactically, in the middle of the game Ireland adjusted what they did tactically in the middle third and the players needed to attend to that on the grass and they did that really, really well. They had to change how we intended to play.
“It was a different type of game from Ireland, very smart by them what they then did, and it needed a big adjustment for our team led by Jamie (George).
“And the third thing, I have used this expression a good number of times, is finding a way to win. We’ll improve as a team, we will be better as a team but fundamentally finding yourself in a situation where you find a way to win, that’s important and the team did that again.”
Hang on, a tactical adjustment in the middle third of the game? Tell us more. “Ireland’s attack has been phenomenal. I said this earlier in the week, the way they get out of their half using, in particular James Lowe, is really effective.
“The pressure they put on your ball with the breakdown, their jackal, their blast, it’s excellent. They do choke tackles. Different every time.
“And the third area I talk about is their attack and I talked about how they have got a great passing game. Very few handling errors, create lots of one-on-ones and play a great phase attack.”
So what exactly happened? “They started kicking less off James Lowe and kicking a bit more off nine, start playing less phase and more contestable kicking and so the middle of the game became a bit more like an arm wrestle.
“Ultimately their tries came from situations where a kick from nine to either a miss by us or giving a penalty away at the next breakdown led to the situation for them to score two tries. It was really smart what they did.
“The guys on the pitch adjusted, had to deal with it, so the game changed from what it looked like in the first 20 to what it looked like then from about 25 to 55. It was a different type of game then.”
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