When Steve Borthwick said the England side he inherited “weren’t good at anything” after last week’s defeat by Scotland the inference, taken at face value, was that they were bad at everything. That isn’t quite what he meant, rather that, having pored over the data, he realised that England were not the frontrunners in any department. Whereas Clive Woodward used to measure his team in terms of individuals – how many of them were the best in the world in their position – Borthwick prefers to crunch the data. It does not make for pretty reading – indeed in some instances England really were bad, others rank average.
