England boss Steve Borthwick admitted his side got what they deserved after another Murrayfield nightmare in Edinburgh.
Borthwick’s men went down 30-21 to lose the Calcutta Cup game for the fourth time on the spin and continue their miserable run against Gregor Townsend‘s side.
England sprinted to a 10-0 lead in the first 15 minutes before the wheels came off and wing Duhan van der Merwe scored the first-ever Scottish hat-trick in the fixture.
Scotland last beat England four times in succession in the Championship in the 1890s and this was a step back for Borthwick‘s side.
And the head coach reckoned the amount of possession coughed up cost his side and the unfamiliarity of the midfield of George Ford, Ollie Lawrence and Henry Slade was exposed.
Borthwick said: “If you make that many handling errors at this level it is very difficult to win especially against a team of Scotland’s quality. Ultimately, we made it too easy for them to score but they were very clinical.
“A huge lesson for our team, as they develop, is that that number of turnovers make it very difficult to win. Today wasn’t good enough. You look at that first 20 minutes, the guys started well, but then our error rate went up. You can’t allow a team to score that easily.
“The Scotland team have been together a long time, their 10,12,13 have started a dozen Tests together and it is the first time our 10, 12 and 13 have started together and it looked like it, didn’t it? It looked like there was a lack of cohesion in what they did and too many fundamental errors.
“After a performance when you don’t think you have maximised your potential there is a disappointment. It doesn’t matter about the result on the scoreboard in that sense but I don’t think the team maximised their potential today.”
England captain Jamie George, whose mother passed away last week, urged fans not to give up on the side. He said: “Hopefully the fans saw in the first 20 minutes a blueprint of how we want to play as a team but it is now about our ability to back that up for 80 minutes. Test rugby can pretty cruel at times – I think we saw that today.
“There are going to be some things we look back on and say ‘that is what English rugby is going to be about’. We saw a lot of it in the first 20 minutes but I didn’t see much of it in the next 20.
“We’re very clear on how we want to play, the way we want to defend, attack and take teams on. I think there was some really great stuff in there – set-piece wise we put Scotland under a lot of pressure.
“I think the foundations are good but as players we need to be better and we need to execute the game plan better than that. We knew it would be difficult coming up here but we weren’t good enough today.”
This was a huge setback for England who had lost just one in nine going into this game but have Ireland and France up next.
Borthwick added: “We would all love progression to be in a nice linear path but it is not, especially at this level. You see a team that is trying to develop and add layers to their game but made errors today. Sometimes you get punished for them, sometimes you don’t. It is a really painful lesson.”
Scotland were cock-ahoop but head coach Gregor Townsend thought his team were better than the nine-point winning margin.
He said: “To score 30 points in this fixture shows what this team is capable of. I thought the bench did really well, but I still felt there were missed opportunities in the final 20 minutes.
“Perhaps that was because we were ahead on the scoreboard so we looked to relieve pressure and kick, backing our defence. We’ll be working on, if we’re ahead against teams, let’s take the opportunities that are there. I’m so proud of the effort. To deny England a bonus point was also good too. There is more we have to bring out in the next two fixtures, very tough away games, but we’ll go to Italy with confidence.”
Townsend added: “Duhan van der Merwe was great today. He saw the opportunities and went for it. I think the first try was really special.”
