The England head coach Steve Borthwick will launch a quest to find a Test-class tight-head prop to eventually replace Dan Cole as his first priority after the New Zealand tour.
Borthwick is concerned that England lack depth behind Cole, 37, who is yet to decide whether the 24-17 defeat by the All Blacks at Eden Park was his last Test.
England’s scrummaging prowess was once again exposed in the loss, which sealed a 2-0 series defeat, with Will Stuart and Bevan Rodd conceding vital penalties at the set piece, thus relieving the pressure on the All Blacks.
It was the same story at the 2023 World Cup, when Ellis Genge and Kyle Sinckler buckled under the pressure of the South African pack in the 16-15 semi-final loss.
Borthwick is happy with the depth of his resources at loose-head prop. He was pleased with how Fin Baxter, the 22-year-old Harlequin, took to Test rugby on the tour to New Zealand, where he made his debut after Joe Marler, 34, broke a foot in the first Test in Dunedin. Genge, 29, will return next season, while Rodd, 23, is developing.
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Yet Borthwick is concerned that England still do not have a proper replacement for Cole. “Clearly, we have got to develop at tight-head. As we look forward, that’s one area we have got to look at,” Borthwick said. “You saw on Saturday that the scrum was under pressure, so that’s an area we have to improve.”
Stuart won his 41st cap on Saturday in Auckland, but is yet to prove he is a Test-class scrummager. Sinckler, 31, has moved from Bristol Bears to Toulon in the Top 14 to improve his scrummaging, but is now ineligible. Joe Heyes, 25, of Leicester Tigers, has seven caps but only two starts — against the United States and Canada in 2021. He did not play on this summer tour.
As he attempts to take his England team to the next level, Borthwick knows it is his main priority to find a tight-head prop. “I’ll have a conversation with Coley in due course and see what he wants to do,” he added. “But quite clearly we need to find some more tight-heads. If you look at the loose-head side and the people who weren’t here — Ellis Genge, Beno Obano, Joe Marler missed the last Test, Fin Baxter, Bevan Rodd. We’ve got competition.
“We won’t quite have that on the other side of the scrum. That’s going to be a big development project for myself and Tom Harrison [the scrum coach]. Will Stuart has done really well in the last couple of Test matches. The New Zealand scrum is very good and outside the scrum I thought he did many things very well. Part of my next step is to do that kind of planning and decide on the right thing to do.
“What’s pretty clear to see is that I’m trying to have consistency in selection and build the number of caps, not just individually but together, so we maximise the cohesion. That’s clearly with a longer-term goal in mind, but we need results now as well. That’s always a challenge the England head coach has. We need results now and we need to be preparing for several years in advance.”
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In the pathway system, there are a few up-and-coming tight-heads whose development may need to be fast-tracked. Asher Opoku-Fordjour, 19, from Sale Sharks, is the most exciting prospect, but England see him as a loose-head and Sale as a tight-head. He plays loose-head for the under-20s, with Bath’s Billy Sela, the 6ft 4in 18-stone 19-year-old on the tight-head side.
Afolabi Fasogbon, 19, from Gloucester, is another young prospect. Josh Iosefa Scott, the 27-year-old New Zealand-born prop who has an English father and plays for Exeter Chiefs, represented England A against Portugal in February.
Cole would not be drawn on his future after the Eden Park Test, in which he became England’s most-capped male forward, surpassing Jason Leonard’s tally of 114 caps.
Asked if the All Blacks Test was his last for England, Cole said: “That’s my final game of the season, yes. I’ve had 14 months of this season. So, yeah, I want to go home, relax, and then I don’t know, we will see. As I said to Steve, I’m on day to day, if I can get through training I’ll do the next day and keep doing day to day. So we’ll go from here and we’ll go home. And we’ll see.”
In their last matches against the top four-ranked sides in the world, England have beaten Ireland by one point, 23-22 in March, but lost to South Africa (in a World Cup semi-final) and New Zealand by one point, both 16-15; to France by two points, 33-31 in the Six Nations, and to the All Blacks again, by seven points at Eden Park.
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Borthwick knows that England must learn to close out tight matches. “The experience of being in these positions, sometimes you have got to be in these positions and you’ll be better for them in the future,” he said.
“I can’t buy experience in international rugby. So all I can do is look at the programme of how we maximise every minute of learning off field and on field.
“I’m disappointed that we got ourselves into winning positions in the last two Test matches and didn’t get them over the line. We want to win the games, but as I said, to the players we want to win and make sure we get the results. To get the results we need to be tactically smart and really well organised.
“But fundamentally, there’s got to be something that sits underneath all that and that is the fight and spirit that we have within the team. I think what you see in this England team now is fight and spirit and we need to make sure that gives us a good foundation for everything we do going forward.”
Jamie George: Bad refereeing decisions cost England chance of draw
The England players felt they were denied the chance to draw the second Test against New Zealand at Eden Park by a bad refereeing decision.
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In the final play of the game the All Blacks led 24-17, but England kicked a penalty to touch and drove a maul towards the tryline. A converted try would have tied the match in Auckland.
From the maul, the centre Ollie Lawrence splintered off with hooker Jamie George, who was then held on the tryline by Beauden Barrett.
Nic Berry, the Australian referee, originally said that George was held up in-goal by Barrett. Then, after a long Television Match Official (TMO) check, the refereeing team decided that Lawrence had obstructed the New Zealand defence illegally before George’s surge to the line, so gave a penalty to the All Blacks that ended the game.
Dan Cole, the replacement prop, felt that the first offence was New Zealand collapsing England’s maul, which had included all of the forwards and most of the backs. “I thought the reason we went around the front was because the maul got collapsed in the middle,” Cole said. “We got done for truck and trailer [obstruction]. But we were held up short at the line. It was not how I would have wanted, or how I thought, the game should end.”
George, the captain, agreed with Cole when asked about the incident. He also felt that play should have continued as he was held up before the tryline.
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“I think it’s wrong. If you’re looking for infringements, I think there is an infringement in the maul first,” George said. “The reason why we had to go round the outside was because they had sacked a live maul in the middle. I am also short of the line and the ball is on the floor so the play must go on. I think there are a lot of bad decisions in that.”
Steve Borthwick, the England head coach, said that he and his team were baited all week by New Zealanders. He thinks his team have proved those doubters wrong after two tight defeats to the All Blacks.
Across the two-match series England lost by a combined total of eight points, having suffered a 16-15 loss in Dunedin on July 6.
“A lot of people were saying after the first Test that New Zealand were going to get so much better,” Borthwick said. “I was being told by people in the street about ten times a day how much we were going to get blown away at Eden Park. I was stopped on the street yesterday by a gentleman who told me that they had unpicked our rush defence, they knew how they were going to beat it. I said ‘thank you for that’.
“I was told in the lift today that it was a privilege for us to play at Eden Park and we would be lucky if we were to get away with less than 50 points conceded.
“The team kept on coming at New Zealand, kept fighting, and when the team went down 24-17, some teams wouldn’t have come back. What these guys did was get back to the New Zealand line, going hard to get the seven points to try and get that draw. That’s a great credit to them and I’m very proud to work with them. A lot of people were writing us off. Hopefully we’ve left a positive impression of English rugby here.”
Despite the progress England have shown under his leadership, Borthwick rued another missed opportunity.
Since the start of the season England have suffered multiple close defeats; a one-point loss to South Africa in the 2023 World Cup semi-final, a two-point defeat to France in the Six Nations, a one-point loss to New Zealand in Dunedin, and then a seven-point defeat in Auckland on Saturday.
In that time they have won some tight games too; 16-14 over Wales and 23-22 over Ireland in the Six Nations, and 30-24 against Fiji in the World Cup quarter-final.
“The team is making progress and we are learning very quickly but it shows we have still got a lot to do,” Borthwick said. “We got into winning positions, we are not too far away, but we have got to learn to convert them into wins. My job is to keep making sure I help this team develop. I think there’s a lot of work to do. I don’t shy away from that but I am looking forward to that challenge.”
