Steve Borthwick’s England reign launches amid litany of errors | Andy Bull

wickenham felt a little different on Saturday afternoon. It was the same walk from the station, by the same stalls on the Whitton Road, past the same faces, under the same sort of sombre February weather, to watch an England team made up, in the large part, of the same names that have been on and off the teamsheets here for the last few years. It was the air around the place that had changed.

That promise didn’t last all that long. Twenty minutes after kick-off, things were feeling more than a little familiar again. And when it was all over, everyone was left facing the same old conclusion, too. England have an awful lot of work to do if they’re ever going to be anything like as good as people around here seem to believe they ought to be. They’ve now blown their shot at a grand slam in the opening round of the last four championships.

And for the England fans, it was as excruciating as watching a man chase after his own hat. Their side missed 20 tackles altogether, more than one out of every 10 they attempted. There were two more of them in the run-up to Ben White’s try, when he slid by Ben Curry then stepped Freddie Steward, and another couple before Van der Merwe scored their fourth try to win it in the 74th minute, when he bulldozed straight over Marcus Smith.

Borthwick preferred to focus on what his team had done with the ball in hand. He said he felt they had made real progress in attack, and it was true that in amongst it all the helter-skelter chaos of the game, there were plenty of little glimpses of what England are capable of doing.It was Max Malins who kicked them into gear after a torpid first quarter. Malins is one of a handful of players in this side who had been burned by Eddie Jones.

Malins made his point. He cut infield to meet a high kick, which he hacked downfield. Malins chased after it like a man sprinting downhill, his feet landing before his mind had time to tell them where to go, and, after hacking it on again, finally caught up with it in Scotland’s 22. It launched a wave of 14 phases. Smith eventually worked out how to finish it when he lofted a high chip into the far corner. Malins looped around the back to catch it.

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