George Ford has admitted England’s record-breaking defeat at the hands of the Barbarians was “embarrassing” and questioned his side’s effort following a fourth successive loss under Eddie Jones.
England conceded their most points in 20 years and their most ever at Twickenham as Chris Ashton ran in a 22-minute hat-trick for the invitational side, who had been together only five days and had only three training sessions. England were without 15 players from Exeter and Saracens, who had contested the Premiership final 24 hours earlier, but missed 34 tackles and conceded nine tries in a first loss to the Barbarians since 2014.
Chris Ashton hat-trick makes forceful point in Barbarians defeat of England
Asked if the 63-45 loss was embarrassing, Ford – co-captain with Chris Robshaw for the day – said: “It is, yeah – it’s not great is it? We didn’t start well, some of the tries seemed like easy, soft scores. I know there were some great scores from the BaaBaas but defence is a mental thing, an effort thing, an attitude thing. We’re massively disappointed in the changing room. No matter what game you’re playing in, when you put the England shirt on you expect to be better than that.
“I don’t know if it’s confidence. It’s more a concentration, energy, attitude-type thing. We’ve definitely addressed some things defensively from the Six Nations in training but you have to make that come to life in a game. You can’t expect it to happen, so we have to question our effort there at times. We tried addressing it during the game, after the first score, the second score, at half-time. We said, ‘We need more life to us, more energy to us, more desire and hunger in defence’.”
Jones had named Elliot Daly, who scored England’s first try, at full‑back but was forced into a change when Henry Trinder went off with a head injury with Danny Cipriani coming on for 53 minutes. Cipriani was quiet, apart from a delicate chip for Jonny May’s late try.
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“It was disappointing because we couldn’t keep [Daly] there. We wanted to. Certainly the initial part of what he did looked pretty promising,” Jones said.
“In the first 20 minutes, we struggled to adjust to the speed of the game. We got a bit shocked by it. We adjusted well, got ourselves back into the game and played some good rugby. But then when we got fatigued in the last 20 minutes, we made some crucial errors in execution and it ended up costing us the game.”
The Barbarians coach, Pat Lam, confirmed that his squad had kept up traditions off the field during the week, as well as on it on Sunday, including a 70s night where Ashton was dressed as a hippie, Finn Russell as Austin Powers, Justin Tipuric as the Cookie Monster and Tatafu Polota-Nau as a member of Kiss. Lam said: “It was funny because I said to them, ‘Fellas, that was a really good training session but I know that some of you probably don’t even remember it … you can look at the pictures!’”
Jones, meanwhile, does at least have the consolation that Billy Vunipola and Owen Farrell came through Saracens’ win against Exeter on Saturday unscathed with his new captain suffering from only cramp in the latter stages of the match. Vunipola lasted an hour, having previously only managed 59 minutes of rugby since breaking his arm in January and then suffering a niggling hamstring injury.
“He didn’t feel his hamstring at all,” the Saracens director of rugby, Mark McCall, said. “That’s the most important thing. He played 60 minutes in very hot conditions. It couldn’t have been a much more demanding game. And for him to play the way he did … I think he’s healthy as well.”