Ellis Genge told England’s players they were “brilliant” for an hour against South Africa and that their opponents “didn’t have any answers” despite the visitors being thrashed 45-21.
Steve Borthwick’s side made the worst-possible start to the Nations Championship, falling into a 17-0 deficit at Ellis Park before rallying strongly at the end of the first half, with tries from Genge and lock George Martin reducing the half-time gap to three points.
However, another Springbok blitz at the start and end of the second half resulted in another blowout defeat, although Alex Coles’ try briefly reduced the deficit to 10 points on 67 minutes.
That defeat extends England’s losing run to five Tests before facing Fiji at the Hill Dickinson Stadium on Saturday. Yet in a post-match team talk filmed by the O2 Inside Line documentary, England vice-captain Genge was adamant that his side had the double world champions on the ropes as he urged the squad to stay united.
“Sometimes boys, on days like this when you’ve had a result like that you go apart, start thinking individual,” Genge said. “Don’t do it. Let’s get even tighter and go again because it won’t get easier. What I will say, for about 60 minutes of that game, they didn’t have any answers. We were all over them. We looked how we trained.
“But you have got to take responsibility as individuals. You got to take responsibility. For the first 10 minutes, it did not look like us, 15 minutes even. So let’s regroup and go again. Get your heads on because it won’t get any easier. Stay tight tonight. Don’t just go back to your rooms and start trying to solve problems. Let’s have it out with each other. I’m proud boys, 60 minutes of that was brilliant. But some of it was [expletive] boys and we’ve got to face that.”
Genge’s comments were endorsed by captain Jamie George when he spoke to the media after the game, also claiming that England had South Africa spooked.
“That wasn’t a bad performance,” George said. “Throughout the 80 minutes, there was a lot of good that went into it. I spoke to those South African guys and they said they were rattled at times. From minute 10 to 40, they were rattled. They don’t do that very often. Probably the last time was when we played them in the 2023 [World Cup] semi-final. There’s good in there. It’s just then making sure we capitalise upon it, reflect on it.”
Pieter-Steph du Toit, the Springbok stand-in captain, gave that assertion short shrift when it was put to him. “Of course, we made some mistakes and they kicked the ball behind our backs similar to how they did in 2023 World Cup semi-final so we were kind of used to it,” Du Toit said. “We knew what to do at the end of this stage and that’s why luckily in the second half we managed it and we could execute what we were supposed to do.”
It is not the first time that England players’ assessment of their own performance has been wildly out of keeping with their supporters. After suffering a first-ever defeat to Italy in March, Ben Earl claimed England had delivered an “unbelievable performance” for the first hour at the Stadio Olimpico, where they led 18-13.
“Like I said, if that game ended at 60 minutes, you’d say that was an unbelievable performance by England,” Earl said. “But, unfortunately, the result didn’t go our way. Honestly, I am so buoyant with this team, we just have to win some games of rugby and we will.”