Steve Borthwick cannot say what he really thinks about England supporters booing their own team, but the sound was unmistakable when Alex Mitchell hoisted the ball into the Twickenham evening sky around eight minutes after half-time as the hosts were trailing 10-7.
Unsurprisingly, the crowd’s tone changed very quickly. Tommy Freeman put his head down and sped through on the chase, lassoing Duhan van der Merwe and flipping the carrier into the 22.
England could pressurise the ensuing breakdown, crowding Scotland into a corner. Ben White needed to hook the ball into touch a couple of phases later. The end result? An England line-out around 20 metres further forward than the initial one; a decent gain in a tight Test match and a platform from which to launch.
As it happened, Jamie Ritchie derailed the next attack with a crafty turnover, nipping in to beat Mitchell on the back of an Ellis Genge carry after Ben Earl and Ben Curry had cleared Jack Dempsey two metres beyond the ball. Two steps forward, a couple backwards: the story of a bitty display from England that occasionally looked as though they were battling their own demons.
The truth is that Borthwick will be well used to boos transforming into cheers when seemingly unsexy plays pay off. Moments prior to Freddie Burns’ drop-goal in the 2022 Premiership final, a Ben Youngs box-kick, hit from beyond the halfway line, was met with loud moans.
A happier noise erupted as Leicester Tigers recovered possession, eventually working their way into a winning position. Burns’ three-pointer has proved a sliding-doors moment in the career of Borthwick. We will never know whether he would have succeeded Eddie Jones as England head coach had that kick slid wide.
Nobody would admit to it now, but the same inimitable boo-cheer swirled around Twickenham when the ball left Fin Smith’s boot a fortnight ago. Smith had spotted that he could set up a contest between Louis Bielle-Biarrey – electric on the ground yet uncertain in the air – and lifted a chip for his Northampton Saints buddy to attack. Freeman climbed, claimed and scored a critical try.
To be absolutely clear, fans coughing up considerable prices for a ticket are perfectly entitled to urge their team to open up. This is not least because England have the tools to be more incisive. On the stroke of half-time, their superior scrum having muscled another penalty, they could have ended the first 40 minutes.
Then, at the next line-out, with the clock in the red, the safe option would have been to use their maul and attempt to milk a penalty. Instead, Ollie Chessum went off the top to Mitchell. Fin Smith flashed a pass across the face of Ben Curry to Ollie Lawrence, who carved through Finn Russell and flicked a superb offload to Marcus Smith.
A jinking run was halted five metres from the try-line and Mitchell found Lawrence again. The latter then fixed two defenders and attempted another pass out of contact. It flew over the head of Ollie Sleightolme, but Borthwick will not admonish Lawrence too much if he is true to his messaging about encouraging ambition as England develop their attack.
Even so, the mood that greeted Mitchell’s box-kick – and also met up-and-unders from Fin Smith later on, despite those allowing England to establish a foot-hold – represents a disconnect between the crowd’s yearning for entertainment and Borthwick’s bid to reverse a losing habit.
Controlling territory is a necessary evil of Test matches. You sometimes wonder if it should hire a PR company. Scotland did so in the first half, and should have forged further ahead. England were far better at it in the second, which proved to be their route back into the lead.
Afterwards, Borthwick made the intriguing admission that “we don’t necessarily want to play the way we played today”. Certainly, Sleightholme is not the ideal wing to use as a specialist chaser – as well as he did to rise and bat back some kicks. Ben Spencer might have been better suited than Harry Randall as a replacement scrum-half for a tense denouement.
England needed to change tack and find a way past a shrewd tactical plan as well as their own psychological baggage. That was not pretty, and they enjoyed plenty of luck again. But winning ugly deserves better than boos.
