Steve Borthwick backs Eddie Jones to revive England in final Test in South Africa

Steve Borthwick has backed Eddie Jones to arrest England’s alarming slump in form, insisting that their coaching team is united behind the Australian.

Jones has come under pressure to resign after England lost the Test series against an inexperienced South Africa side in Bloemfontein last Saturday, his side’s fifth successive defeat.

The Rugby Football Union has said it has no plans to reconsider Jones’s position despite the run of defeats and Borthwick said he was confident England would begin their revival in the third Test in Cape Town on Saturday.

“I have worked for Eddie for a long time now. I see consistency,” said Borthwick.

“He's an excellent coach - we all know that - and what this England team has done over the last couple of years with the work he has led has been tremendous.

“I see someone who is continuing to work to help this team get better as we all are.

“He is leading this squad tremendously well and we believe in him and know we will turn this around and get the results we want.

“As coaches we always have robust conversations because that is the nature of coaching.

“We discuss the direction we want and get on with delivering it as a coaching team and that is with Eddie Jones as our head coach.

“We believe that we will turn this around and get the results we want.”

England have sunk to sixth in the world rankings on the back of a dramatic slump that began midway through the NatWest Six Nations.

“We all know the results are not where we want them to be,” Borthwick said.

“I along with everybody else involved in the England squad is determined to turn the results around and get a win this weekend.”

Brian Moore, the former England and Lions hooker and Telegraph columnist questioned on Monday whether Borthwick was the right man to coach the England forwards given their inability to dominate their Springbok opponents. 

Borthwick conceded that England’s forward play, including their setpiece and line-out maul, had been below their expectations but insisted the problems would be fixed.

“There have been aspects, as with our whole team, there have been aspects that have been positive but ultimately we haven’t got the results we wanted to and that is the team, the forwards, we want to make sure we get the wins and we haven’t managed to do that,” Borthwick added.

“I think there have been some critical moments. We have talked about there was one scrum clearly at the weekend and there was one scrum the week before.

“There was an opportunity on the line with the driving line-out this week and we weren’t able to take those opportunities and weren’t able to get what we needed in those critical moments. That is disappointing. It is very clear the areas that we are determined to put right.”

Warren Gatland, the Wales head coach, said after his side’s 2-0 Test series win over Argentina 2-0, were “poles apart” from England.

Borthwick, who was part of Gatland’s Lions coaching team, however defended England’s record against Wales.

“Clearly I know Warren having worked with him previously, 12 months ago. While respecting him as a coach, he can have his opinion, ultimately we went to Argentina last year and won 2-0. 

“And out recent record against Wales has been a good one. It was just a short time ago that we beat them. He can comment where he likes, I’m concentrating on the England team. If he wants to comment on us that’s up to him.

“I’ve not paid any attention to rankings. We want to win the World Cup next year. We know the results we’ve had in the last period of time are clearly not the results we want, we’re bitterly disappointed about that. But we have a great resolve to get this right.”