“The entire effort of the future will be to invent silence, slowness and solitude,” the French surrealist painter Marcel Duchamp once said. Alas, Duchamp died in 1968 and was unable to witness Steve Borthwick’s England rendering his vision in perfect flesh. At the end of a game that seemed to last for about four months, it was England who were left still standing, still unbeaten, still playing the sort of rugby not even its mother could love.
At least it all ended in a minor blaze of fun. As England put a little butter and marmalade on the scoreline in the final 15 minutes, as Marcus Smith made his belated entrance and began to run riot against a tiring Japan team who had finally discovered their outer limits, it was possible to see how England would ultimately rationalise this performance in their own minds. Smart people will opine that this is how smart teams play smart rugby: setting the game up, taking it deep, wearing sides down.
Perhaps in the coming days England’s coaches will be wheeled out to argue that playing poorly is all just part of the grand master plan, that repeatedly kicking away good possession is actually a form of 4D chess that a layperson could scarcely be expected to grasp. This has been a frequent trope in recent weeks. England’s drab warm-up displays: merely a symptom of trying not to peak too soon. Tom Curry’s red card against Argentina: a strategic streamlining that allowed his teammates to focus on their tasks. Owen Farrell’s suspension: a stroke of genius keeping the talisman fresh for the knockout rounds.
But from a safe distance, up high in the stadium, it all just looked – and apologies for using a layperson’s term here – absolutely godawful. And perhaps after the euphoria of Marseille this was a reminder that any team can have a good day at the office. These lapses do happen from time to time. Class is temporary. Soul-numbing drudgery – on the evidence of Borthwick’s England, at any rate – is permanent.
And given England’s incurable foot fetish, in the end it was somehow fitting that the gamebreaking moment – a Courtney Lawes try walked sheepishly over the line in the ideal confluence of silence, slowness and solitude – came courtesy of that most footballing of touches, the flick-on header from Joe Marler. Last week England had compared Japan’s style of rugby to Barcelona’s “tiki-taka”, and in a way this was the perfect antidote: a long pass straight on to the head of the big man.
What will largely be forgotten in the long run is just how parlous a position England were in at that point: 13-12 ahead with the game just beginning to fracture and fray a little. Another Japan score and, given the way England were playing, there would have be no guarantees of a comeback. This was, we were told, a far weaker Japan than the classes of 2015 and 2019. But for almost an hour a team that were thrashed 52-13 at Twickenham in November stood as equals, flinging and running and rinsing and repeating with the same kind of joy and exuberance that England seem to have thrown overboard on their trip across the Channel.
This, as much as resources or heritage, is the real dividing line between these two sides. Japan play the kind of rugby that is still basically recognisable as the game we all started playing as children. Run, crash, pass, pass, run and never stop running. England, for their part, met this assault of angles and artistry with percentages and perspiration, the rugby of brains and brawn to counter the rugby of soul. “Physical contest! Physical contest!” screamed Jamie George as England hunkered down for an early scrum. As a description of his surroundings, it was flawless. I like to imagine that at mealtimes George greets the arrival of his food with a cry of: “Dinner! Dinner!”
Can England show more dimensions? Can they adjust to new challenges? Can they keep their discipline? On these matters, the jury remains resolutely out. In fact the only question England really answered here was: can they kick it? To which the answer is: oh God, yes. Long before the end of the first half George Ford’s little dinks and slaps were drawing loud boos from England’s own supporters.
And it is hard not to think that on some level the problem here is as much as mental as tactical: a team lacking in the basic confidence to handle the ball, to trust in their joy. Lawes’s crucial try came from perhaps the first bit of ambition they showed all game, the ball finally popping wide from Alex Mitchell to Jonny May with the lung-busting run. Even here, of course, there was an essential dysfunction at work: just how does Ford end up spinning a rapid pass at head height to a marauding prop?
But let’s be real: there isn’t a marauding, spine-tingling, all‑dancing team of entertainers waiting to burst out of this squad. Not in the time available, at any rate. This is what we have, and this is what they are. England will grind. England will kick. England will wait patiently and impassively for opponents to screw up. England will feel no need whatsoever to apologise for any of this. At which point another Duchamp quote springs to mind. “Il n’y a pas de solution, parce qu’il n’y a pas de problème.” There is no solution, because there is no problem.
