England find some green shoots of their own in defeat, as Johnny Sexton admits Ireland made it hard for themselves

Jamie George claims England's only try. Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Oliver Brown

March 19 2023 02:30 AM

As pale spring sunshine gave way to a night of nights in Dublin, there was a glimpse, however faint, of how life for England was meant to feel under Steve Borthwick. Even on this ecstatic occasion for Ireland, Grand Slam winners for a fourth time, the men in white could have been forgiven for feeling like spare parts at a wedding. And yet amid all the churning emotion, all the soreness at seeing Freddie Steward sent off for a collision he insisted he could not avoid, they conjured by far their most creditable display of a tormented Six Nations.

It was the coldest of comforts for England head coach Borthwick, who, at the end, stared at the rapturous Irish celebrations and contemplated what might have been. But this was one day that demanded a glass-half-full perspective. Nobody, in the wake of the shellacking suffered against France, had given England a prayer for this visit, with Clive Woodward arguing that success would be limiting the margin of defeat to 10 points.

They did not quite manage that, succumbing by 13, but the fact they did so with 14 men attested to the level of wounded pride.

A week earlier at Twickenham, several of these players had looked as if they wanted the turf to swallow them whole. This time, they scrapped, they countered, they hassled, and for a brief spell in the second half it appeared as if they might spring the most improbable shock. Owen Farrell, playing almost on one leg at times after his ankle injury, offered a timely reminder of his captaincy credentials, with an astute kicking game rattling Irish resolve.

“We made it much harder for ourselves than we should have,” admitted Johnny Sexton, who drew the loudest cheers of all as he bowed out from his final Six Nations as the record points-scorer.

It had taken five Tests, but England derived some solace from a winter of unremitting gloom. Amid a rhapsody in green for Sexton and the champions, the losers could cling to some green shoots of their own. In this, their last tournament match before the World Cup, England delivered 80 minutes in the image of their head coach: belligerent, committed, and refusing to entertain any notion of capitulation.

Farrell, who has endured a torrid seven weeks, gave his father, Andy, a congratulatory embrace, the latest poignant expression of this remarkable family story. He was realistic afterwards about the scale of England’s task over the next six months, but he had seen enough to restore some optimism.

“I thought we showed a tremendous amount of fight,” he reflected. “The game changed with the red card, but we caused Ireland some problems. We’ve got to go back to our clubs now to be better players. We’ve laid some foundations, but we have to build on that.”

Fight: it is the one trait that has been conspicuous by its absence with England of late, as they struggled to rouse themselves from the poisonous denouement to the Eddie Jones era. It is tempting to ask why Jones was not fired sooner, to give his successor better prospects of a pre-World Cup reconstruction. But this is not a moment for retrospectives. Borthwick has to believe these players are on a path to flourish in France in the autumn. And there was sufficient evidence here to suggest this might not be such a flight of fancy.

Ireland were oddly off-kilter, their anxieties laid bare when Hugo Keenan, usually metronomic in his precision, hoofed a kick horribly into touch inside his own 22. Surely they were not about to let this chance drift away on the cool evening breeze? In terms of atmospherics, they had everything in their favour, with even the ships on the Liffey estuary honking their horns loudly in an effort to disrupt Farrell’s kicking rhythm.

The mood was edgy, jittery, as if anticipating an English surge. And yet for all England sniped and harried, their propensity for brain fades returned to haunt them. Manu Tuilagi’s effort at a saving tackle on Dan Sheehan was so misjudged that he practically pinballed the hooker over the line. It was a curious performance from this ferocious wrecking ball of a player. On the one hand, he looked so dangerous in attack that you wondered why Borthwick had bothered using anybody else at inside centre. But defensively, he could most kindly be defined as a work in progress.

Borthwick was desperate for the damage to be minimised on the stroke of half-time. Some hope, such was the fate of the luckless Steward. He tried to bail out of the collision with Keenan, succeeding only in turning his shoulder into his head in what referee Jaco Peyper deemed a dangerous contact. By the laws of the game, you could just about comprehend the call. But by the spirit? That is a debate that will smoulder for some time.

You could tell instantly England would not let Steward’s red deflate them. When they forced an Irish knock-on with some desperate, swarming resistance, they celebrated as if they had just scored the match-winning try. Extraordinary, what a siege mentality can do. At the end of a tournament disfigured by the meekest of crumblings against France, England rediscovered some self-esteem.