England slip to record defeat against France

By Duncan Bech
12/3/23

Steve Borthwick admitted England were brutally exposed by a record 53-10 defeat by France that revealed the gulf between the rivals.

England - who included Exeter Chiefs star Henry Slade in their starting line-up - collapsed to their heaviest loss at Twickenham of all time after leaking seven tries, enabling Les Bleus to record a first Guinness Six Nations win at the venue since 2005.

France, positioned second in the global rankings and the current Grand Slam champions, were responsible for one of the darkest days in English rugby history and Borthwick admitted the performance was not good enough.

“We’re incredibly disappointed. Immense credit to France – their power, pace and class showed. It shows where the gap is,” Borthwick said. “No one is under any illusions about what we need to do. We’ve been pretty up front about that throughout. We wanted to understand exactly how the development of this team has gone and where we’re at compared to the best teams in the world. We fell considerably short, that’s the reality.

“The key element is that we know where we are. It shows just how much work we have to do. France showed just how much better they are than us. I said we’d have a good understanding of where we’re at as a team by the end of the Championship and you can see how much work we’ve got to do. France were able to dominate the tackle area and offload. While we understood that was a major threat we weren’t able to stop it.”

Having been thrashed out of sight by France in their third heaviest defeat of all time, England must now pick themselves up off the floor before taking on Six Nations pacesetters Ireland in Dublin.