Our errors gifted Australia win says England coach Borthwick

England coach Steve Borthwick bemoaned his side’s terrible error count as they somehow lost 42-37 to Australia on Saturday, having led by 12 points early in the first half and again by two with less than a minute to go.

Australia battled back superbly to take the lead in the second half and, having then twice lost it, won the match with the clock in the red with a superbly-created try by Max Jorgensen.

“I think it’s one every England supporter and every England player or anyone associated with the team is gutted about right now,” Borthwick said after his team’s fourth successive loss.

“It’s a game we should have won. We were in a position to win multiple times. But when you turn over that much ball and make the game that unstructured against a team with that much pace, you’re giving them opportunities and we gave them far too many.”

Two early tries by Chandler Cunningham-South had England 15-3 ahead and, after falling 28-18 behind, two by replacement winger Ollie Sleightholme put them back into the lead after 70 minutes.

More errors let Australia snatch the lead, Maro Itoje then thought he had won it with a fifth try after 78 minutes, only for Jorgensen to claim Australia’s first Twickenham win in five attempts dating back to the 2015 World Cup.

England missed 35 tackles, and turned the ball over 19 times.

“We talked about the team developing the attacking side of the ball, talked about the team having the confidence to move the ball and I think you saw that today,” Borthwick said.

“But clearly the consequence is that if you turn the ball over that many times, you’re not giving your defence much of a chance. The challenge is to understand the right balance with that. If you give the opposition that many chances, they’re going to take them and they took plenty today.”

Borthwick was particularly frustrated with Andrew Kellaway’s try that restored Australia’s lead five minutes from the end, coming after another England dropped ball on the halfway line.

“I think the penultimate try Australia scored is one we’ll debrief properly with the players and look at the decision-making process that happened, what we decided to play and when we decided to play it, given the scoreboard situation,” he said.

“I thought the players were magnificent then to put themselves in the position to get the lead again. At that point you need to see that game out, to do all the right things around the kick-off, unfortunately we knocked the ball on.

“We just gave them one more shot and they were good enough to take it and we weren’t good enough to stop them.”

Captain Jamie George was similarly frustrated. “At times our attack looked brilliant, but when you turn the ball over through errors, then it’s loose and unstructured and Australia are very good in that,” he said.

“There are going to be some clips that are difficult to watch back.”