Seven meetings with top-tier nations, all lost. And maybe worst of all, Steve Borthwick’s side led in all with under 30 minutes left.
They led 10-5 at the break but conceded 22 points in 21 second-half minutes and only got back to within one score through Tommy Freeman’s try when the clock had already gone red.
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Read MoreBorthwick’s defensive system has been through several incarnations since Eddie Jones was sacked in December 2022. The hardcore, all-out blitz system deployed by defence coach Felix Jones displayed green shoots of growth during England’s tour of New Zealand last summer, where they lost two Tests narrowly, the first by a single point.
“England are unfit,” former Ireland and Lions winger Tommy Bowe told the BBC.
“It seemed like they were deliberately trying to slow down play. And then in the second half, they just had no puff. They had no energy. They were walking to line-outs.”
But there is no doubt that a high-tempo defence is hard work, for any team.
“You have got to accelerate off the line over and over again, whereas there were times back in the day when a winger, for example, just would not need to do that amount of work.
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Read MoreAgainst Ireland, the ferryman’s bill was a hefty one and while it was to an extent the same old story, it was told a different way.
The pre-tournament camp in Girona, where defence coach Joe El-Abd was present despite his current job-share with French team Oyonnax, was spent developing a hybrid approach.
“It was still [fast] off the line, it was still trying to put teams under pressure and getting high in the eye-line and forcing mistakes, but it was a lot more connected and a lot more together.
“England were hard to play against in that first half. You can see they’ve changed that philosophy.”
“There’s a bit of a shift from an all-or-nothing, man-and-ball [approach] to one that’s up, hold, push again on the pass,” Sale Sharks director of rugby Alex Sanderson said last month.
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Read MoreAs it so often has for England over the last year, it worked – at first. But fitness, Borthwick said, could not be blamed for the drop-off.
In a group where the defensive system differs quite radically from one played at club level and time to learn it is short, even a refined version of the all-out defence, the role of the S&C department cannot be overstated.
“If you’re a player that plays as part of a defensive system with a Premiership club throughout the whole of your pre-season, and the pre-autumn period, and then you come in, you’ve got 10 days to get fit for a new defence system, it’s daunting, because you think, ‘How am I going to get this done here?’
“But there isn’t a part of rugby that doesn’t have a physical component to it, so there’s challenges everywhere. It’s just talking to the coach and seeing how you can best equip them to do it.”
“It was evident how hard the players ran for each other,” Borthwick said.
England box-kicked more than any other team in the Six Nations last weekend with their expert in the field, Alex Mitchell, back at scrum-half. They also averaged just 25.5 metres per kick in open play, compared to Ireland’s 30.7.
So maybe this isn’t a question of fitness or conditioning at all. Biggar puts it more bluntly than Borthwick could for fear of entirely throwing his players under the bus.
“Some might see that as a lack of conditioning. But it’s not that.
At least England have home advantage, but in the Six Nations the challenge rarely relents. Ireland retreat, France advance, and their goal is much the same: to kick an Englishman while he is down.
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