LONDON — Ellis Genge apologised to the England fans and said the team believed their own hype after they fell to a record 42-21 defeat to Ireland in the Six Nations at Allianz Stadium, Twickenham, on Saturday.
It was a disastrous performance from England, while Ireland were exceptional. Ireland outscored England five tries to three, and dominated the breakdown and picked apart England’s lineout.
Post-match Steve Borthwick bemoaned their first half performance where for the second week running they left themselves too much to do, following their 31-20 defeat to Scotland in Edinburgh last week.
The result leaves England’s hopes of a first Six Nations title since 2020 in tatters.
“Two weeks in a row conceding so many points in the first 15 minutes,” Genge told the BBC. “There is [a] mountain to climb after that and everyone has to take a look at themselves.
“No one knows what the answer is right now or we would have sorted it out. It opened up scar tissue from last week, we have to be better at managing that period and stop turning the ball over.
“It’s brutal, professional sport because if you get 5% wrong it’s gone. We probably believed the hype from the first week too much. We can’t let the noise in now. Sorry to the fans, you have been outstanding, we have let everyone down, apologies for that but I promise we will make it better. We are going to go away and work as hard as we can to go away and rectify things.”
Borthwick will carry out a comprehensive review of England’s first-half struggles. During that first 40, Borthwick made two tactical switches with both Luke Cowan-Dickie and Freddie Steward hooked.
England were 22-0 down after 30 minutes, and also had Steward sin-binned and while they managed to grab a score just before half-time, a yellow card to Henry Pollock at the start of the second half halted any hints of a fightback.
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“It was bitterly disappointing and huge credit to Ireland, they took their chances, their kicking game was excellent,” Borthwick said. “This team has been very, very good for a quite a long time in games that are tight, even if we go a score or two down, being very strong in that second half and always finding a way to win that second half.
“Unfortunately for two weeks now we have given ourselves a mountain to climb, given the opposition too many points and we have not got scoreboard presence. We will be looking closely at that and how I set the team up to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Maro Itoje, on his 100th appearance, added: “I guess ultimately we weren’t accurate. We weren’t accurate in and around the breakdown and then when we had opportunities in Ireland’s 22 we weren’t accurate in taking them.
“I think we just need to look at how we can make sure that when we do have territory and we do have opportunities we convert them.”
