Imitation game’s not working as England stare into the abyss

Is this bottom? Is this as far as England rugby descends into the Red Rose abyss before somehow rising like a phoenix from the flames?

As the stony silence surrounded the England team on Saturday, that of disbelief and befuddlement of how a side with much more finance behind it seemingly looked lost against a magnificent Fijian team.

Amongst the silence of the English fans you could almost hear the Fijian commentator screaming, ‘Are you watching Rishi Sunak? Your boys just took one hell of a beating’, but it wasn’t needed, because the 30-22 defeat was not that much of a surprise.

England have been so far from a collective for so long that when a powerhouse Fiji team rolled into Twickenham there were nerves everywhere. The team, the fans and the coaches would have felt a little jolt of apprehension when Fiji’s captain Waisea Nayacalevu scored just after half-time.

Even worse, before that when the monsoon dropped its bucket-load of rain, a traditional helping factor for English sides playing Polynesian teams, renowned for their free-flowing, off-loading attacking style, it was Fiji who grew in confidence, who bullied the English defence, and snapped back with brute force defending any English response.

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Put matter-of-factly, England seem lost, devoid of a collective ability to believe in each other and in what they are doing.

England are imitating – they are trying to be something they are not. They are trying to be South Africa, they want to kick and bully, to use blunt force in attack to break down defences and apply pressure.

Take the South Africa game just the night before where the real Springboks did that to New Zealand – inflicting a record-breaking 35-7 defeat on the All Blacks at Twickenham – with monumental physicality to show the globe as to why you never write them off before a World Cup. The problem is they are experts at it, it is in their DNA. It’s not in England’s.

Steve Borthwick relies heavily on stats and this is what did at Leicester, he and his coaching team hard-nosed their way through the Premiership, when he had a team full of physical specimens and an incredible set-piece that could dominate 85 per cent of the league.

Therefore, copy and pasting that into the world game makes sense, except it is not working because in the top echelons of world rugby, everyone has that – everyone has talent, size, ability and technical knowledge of set piece. The worry is, his players know it too.

When a team tries to imitate and it does not work, it can quickly fall apart. Players are on the ground and they sense it, they feel that these tactics are not working, but they can say and do very little.

Steve has come in, and this is the way he wishes to play, and the players would have agreed. With lots of Leicester and Saracens personnel on the teamsheet, it is a style in which they will have been accustomed for many years.

However, when confronted with teams as physically strong as you, who do what you are trying to do, but much better, players recognise this and the collective belief from the team wanes.

They question themselves, their counterparts and the coaches. When George Ford mentioned the team was not becoming siloed – that the groups were still socialising as a collective – this is what he is referencing. This is a dangerous spot, the disharmony of a group can have an earth-shattering impact to even the strongest collective spirit.

As Twickenham rewrote the record books on both Friday night and Saturday, the most painful was for England. It is not the indignity of losing to Fiji for the first time, they are and always have been a dangerous side. It is the consequence of that result, and what it means for the camp just before they cross the Channel.

How this side can pull itself back from the precipice and what can be done to realign self-belief and a collective spirit, seems to be the toughest question of all.

Argentina, England’s first opponents in France, will be licking their lips.

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