England’s head coach, Steve Borthwick, has admitted his side were taught “a painful lesson” as they slumped to a record-equalling fourth successive Calcutta Cup defeat. It is now Scotland’s best winning sequence against England since 1972 and Borthwick conceded his team’s mistakes had sown the seeds of their own downfall.
“We know today wasn’t good enough,” said Borthwick. “When you make that number of handling errors at this level it’s very difficult to win. Ultimately we made it too easy for them to score. They were very clinical but the huge lesson for us is that [conceding] that number of turnovers makes it very difficult.
