Six Nations: England’s Borthwick expresses deep disappointment following defeat to Scotland

EDINBURGH — England head coach Steve Borthwick expressed his “bitter disappointment” and reflected on numerous missed opportunities following his team’s 31-20 loss to Scotland on Saturday.

England relinquished the Calcutta Cup once more after only a year, having been outperformed by Scotland at Murrayfield.

The home side surged to a 17-0 advantage, a lead from which England was unable to recover, and Borthwick noted that their execution was lacking throughout the match.

“Bitterly disappointed. Huge credit to the Scotland team, I thought they played really well today,” Borthwick stated in a post-match press conference.

“I think in that first 20 minutes to concede the points we conceded … Disappointing. What’s typically been happening is we’ve slowly reeled teams in.

“When we played against New Zealand, we went 12-0 down, we reeled them in gradually. Unfortunately, we gave them too much of a head start and gave ourselves too much to do. Playing 30 minutes of that first 50 with 14 men hurt us.”

Scotland scored two tries after a yellow card was issued to Henry Arundell in the eighth minute.

Although he returned to the field and scored England’s first try, the winger received a second yellow card—resulting in a red—just before halftime.

Scotland capitalized on England’s mistakes, aided by strong performances from fly-half Finn Russell and centres Sione Tuipulotu and Huw Jones, exploiting the spaces left by their opponents.

“Clearly playing such a significant portion of the game without a winger against a team that was moving the ball to that edge hurt us and ultimately it left us with too much to do in the second half,” Borthwick remarked.

England’s day was epitomized by Jones’ try in the second half, when England was in a favorable position, but George Ford’s drop goal attempt was blocked, allowing Scotland to counterattack 70 meters to score.

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Borthwick was exasperated that his team was not more efficient.

“What we certainly did was create lots of opportunities to score,” he noted.

“There was a lot of time particularly in that second half we spent a lot of time in the opposition 22.

“If we’d taken some of those chances maybe the game would have been different.”