Stuart Lancaster has warned his players that he is ready to dispense with anyone he did not feel was capable of performing in the white heat of the World Cup next year.
England are hosting the event and the head coach had hoped to use the autumn internationals as a launchpad. But they have yet to take-off after South Africa, like New Zealand the previous week, left Twickenham with a three-point victory and extended the home side’s losing run to five matches.
“You cannot fault the players for honesty, but we needed to be smarter,” said Lancaster. “All credit to South Africa for their victory, but we made it easy for them by putting ourselves under pressure, especially in the first half. We want to learn about players, who can and who cannot deliver. I have already thought about the changes that will be made for Samoa [on Saturday]. This series was always about winning and we have not managed to achieve that so far, albeit against the best two sides in the world. We have 10 matches to go before the World Cup and they are all important.”
In the Sky studio, the former England coach Sir Clive Woodward highlighted the backs. “The forward pack is doing really well,” he said. “The front five, the scrums, the lineout, all the traditional strengths of English rugby are going well. It’s outside of that I just don’t think we are quick enough and we’re certainly not playing enough real footballers in the backs division to take on Australia, South Africa and New Zealand – which has to be the goal.”
The likes of fly-half George Ford, prop Kieran Brookes and second row George Kruis, whose caps have all come off the bench, are set to start. Even though England scored three tries, two came from driving mauls and they did not offer enough of a threat behind.
“We did well to come back from 20-6 down to draw level and I thought the game had turned our way, but South Africa came back to close out the game,” said Lancaster. “We played too much in our own half initially considering the wet conditions and they fed off our mistakes. That is why we have to be smarter.”
Chris Robshaw bemoaned the fact his side had to play catch up as they slumped to a fifth defeat on the bounce, losing 31-28 to South Africa at Twickenham. The Springboks seized control early on, with tries from Jan Serfontein and Cobus Reinach giving them a 20-6 lead just after the interval.
Although Robshaw’s pack muscled England back into the contest with tries from David Wilson and Ben Morgan off the back of driving mauls, South Africa kept them at arm’s length with a touchdown from Schalk Burger before Brad Barritt closed the gap in the dying moments.
“I think we were a bit reactive today, we allowed them to get ahead of us and then we had to play catch up,” the England captain told Sky Sports 1.
“We had a brilliant patch out there where we got two driving mauls going but unfortunately we allowed them to get their driving maul going too. It’s tough to take, especially at home, but we’ll have to work hard and come back next week.”
After the 3-0 series whitewash in New Zealand in the summer and the 24-21 defeat by the All Blacks last week, it now means they have suffered a fifth successive defeat for the first time since 2006 – which was also the last year they managed to beat South Africa, who are now unbeaten in 12 matches against England. Like last week against the All Blacks England’s set piece worked well, with two tries coming from lineouts, and the scrum was also strong, but Robshaw feels his side are falling just short of what they are capable of.
“We are probably not doing ourselves justice. We all know the way we train and the way we want to play and we haven’t put it on the pitch as well as we would have liked,” he added.
The scrum-half Danny Care said England remain World Cup contenders. “Maybe we tried too hard because we so badly wanted to win. I know people will write us off but there is self-belief in this side and we will come back stronger. Our confidence will not be dented.”
The South Africa head coach, Heyneke Meyer, agreed with Care. “I believe they will have a great World Cup and they can make the final,” he said. “They are a quality side and it is only a matter of time because they win one of these games. We adjusted our gameplan because it rained before the start and we played to the conditions.”
