England fullback Freddie Steward says any criticism of the team’s recent run should be on the players and not head coach Steve Borthwick.
England have lost their last five Test matches and have Japan coming to town on Sunday. They came into the November series looking to put down a marker against the southern hemisphere’s elite nations, but have lost to New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
The last defeat was against the Springboks on Saturday, as England fell 29-20. Steward returned to the team at fullback for the clash, but his return was not enough to galvanise England to what would have been a key victory.
Borthwick said post-match he is confident he has the full backing of the RFU, and Steward says it should be the players who are taking the flak for the recent run of form, and not Borthwick.
“We almost let him down today,” Steward said. “I don’t think the fault should go to him at all. As players we had a gameplan that put us in position to win that game — we’ve got to look at ourselves as to why we didn’t pull away at the end and go back ahead.
“[Borthwick’s] an unbelievable coach and rugby player. He has a great rugby brain, is an unbelievable motivator, man manager, and as players we believe in everything he’s bringing to this team. The fault today probably lies in our hands. We put ourselves in a position to win that game, and probably were at 50-60 minutes, we were ahead, and again we didn’t see it out.”
Maro Itoje echoed Steward’s sentiments. “[Borthwick’s] honestly been fantastic,” Itoje said. “I’ve rarely seen a coach who has as much devotion as him. We need to do better by him. We need to finish off these games.
“The staff have been brilliant throughout this campaign. We’ve got one more week to go. It’s on us as players, us as senior players, us as leaders to take responsibility and turn this thing around.”
England are likely to shuffle things up for Japan on Sunday, and Borthwick took in England A’s match against Australia A. He is likely to give a couple of the younger players a go against Japan and Steward is hoping the team will pull together and impress before turning attention to next year’s Six Nations.
“You don’t want to be consistent with negativity,” Steward said. “We’ll come back on Tuesday, review what we need to, and attack that Japan game. We want to put on a performance so we can leave this campaign with something to take from it.”
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