Steve Borthwick admits the “reality” that his England side “fell considerably short” in their record 53-10 loss to France at Twickenham on Saturday.
It was an evening to forget for the Red Rose as France ran circles around the side on their hallowed turf claiming their first win at Twickenham since 2005 and England’s biggest defeat at home.
France were sensational and who issued a powerful reminder of their quality ahead of the World Cup on their home turf later this year.
Work to be done
Borthwick is not under any illusions of what lies ahead of his team and how much work needs to be done to narrow the gap.
“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.”
Disappointed result
England stand-in captain Ellis Genge echoed his coach’s sentiments and knows his team has a lot of work to be done.
“I’m pretty disappointed and we have a lot of work to do and it shows where we are at,” Genge said.
“We lost the contact area and chased tails and everyone will write us off and that’s brilliant – we just want to get better.
“France are brilliant and have shown why they are number two in the world and we are way off where we want to be.
Click Here: Joao Cancelo jersey sale
“We probably need to be a lot better in the contact area and that is down to the forwards and there were some harsh lessons.”
Meanwhile, France boss Fabien Galthie was delighted with his team’s efforts after coming to Twickenham and not returning with the glory for several years.
“I’ve been coming to Twickenham for a long while – 20 years. It’s emotional,” Galthie said.
“We played well, how we wanted to. We wanted to do that, we didn’t know how, but we wanted to do that.
“We’ve not been satisfied by our Six Nations. We wanted to do something here. The players wanted to put in a big game against England.”