England lavish praise on Scotland after Calcutta Cup defeat but laments big moment

An inspired Scotland team wrestled the Calcutta Cup back from English hands with a convincing victory. They ran in four two tries at Murrayfield’s to England’s two. The visitors’ cause wasn’t helped by a yellow card and then a 20-minute red to winger Henry Arundell, while George Ford had a drop-goal attempt charged down for a try.

English hopes of winning the tournament now hang in the balance ahead of a clash with Ireland at Twickenham next weekend. Borthwick accepted that his team left themselves too much to do after a poor start and that Ford’s moment was decisive.

“Huge credit to the Scotland team who I thought played really well today,” said Borthwick. “They certainly got an advantage in those loose balls that came off that aerial contest. From those loose balls they attacked really well.

“Clearly playing such a huge part of the game without a winger, against a team that was moving the ball to the edge so much, rhat hurt us and gave us too much to do in the second half.

“There's two teams out there, two good teams. They've both got a plan and are both trying to impose their plan. I think in our first 20 minutes to concede the points we conceded and going down was disappointing.

“What's typically been happening and what's happened over the last period of time is we've slowly reeled teams in. We played against New Zealand and we were 12-0 down and we were reeling them in gradually. Unfortunately, we gave them too much of a head start and gave ourselves too much to do today. As I say, playing 30 minutes of that first 15 with 14 men, that hurt us.

‘What ifs’ for England boss

“I think there'll be some areas clearly that we've got to review and look at what we've got to do better. I think that what we certainly did was create lots of opportunities to score. There was a lot of time, particularly in our second half, we spent a lot of time in the opposition 22. A lot of chances down that end of the field. If we'd taken some of those chances, maybe the game would have been different at the end of it.”

Asked if he is still confident England can win the Six Nations, with matches against Ireland, Italy and France to come, Borthwick replied: “I think, as I said to you, we take each game as we know it will be the end of it. We need to focus on the game in front of us. The game in front of us is Ireland on Saturday at Twickenham.”

Borthwick refused to be drawn on criticising referee Nika Amashukeli for his decision to caution Arundell for not releasing just eight minutes into the contest/ “To be honest, when I'm in the game I don't spend any time looking,” he said. “The referee makes a decision and I go on with trying to think how we're going to deal with the situation.

“I suppose he [Arundell] is very disappointed, as all the players are.”

Borthwick did admit that Ford’s charged-down drop-goal just before the hour-mark took the wind out of England’s sails. “Clearly at that point in the game, as I said, about a team that has reeled in a lot of opponents over a long period of time,” added Borthwick. “At 24-13, you get that drop-off, 24-16, it's still about 20 minutes left, 24 minutes left I think it was roughly at that point in time.

“That's a different complexion. To go down the other end and lose seven points, that ten-point swing was big. But clearly that was a big point in the game. There's plenty of other smaller moments in the game that added up to that result. We'll be back.”

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