Borthwick's bold plan crumbles to dust in Dublin

Amid the scars left by a life in the second row, Steve Borthwick has a good poker face.

He doesn't have many tells, keeping his emotions under tight rein and his thoughts to himself.

But Tuesday was no bluff.

By naming his team two days early, Borthwick put his cards on the table and challenged Ireland to prove him wrong.

England stuck with Marcus Smith at fly-half and Freddie Steward at full-back, picked debutant Cadan Murley on the wing and bet the house on a back row of Ben Earl, Tom Curry and his twin brother Ben.

The selection was a statement of intent; to win the air, to sap Ireland's speed with a nuisance ground game and throw a defensive blanket over their attack.

For 40 minutes, Borthwick's plan paid out.

England scored the opening try early as Smith ran back a kick, Ollie Lawrence busted a hole and Henry Slade's cute grubber put the ball on a platter for Murley.

Earl and the Twindaloo – Sale fans' nickname for the Curry brothers – were causing Ireland's attack indigestion.

They steamed into the breakdown, slowing the ball as potential attackers were drawn in to secure the supply lines.

The defence was up flat and fast, scattering Ireland's attacking patterns. And by shortening the line-out – a potential area of weakness - they thinned out Ireland's thicket of jumpers.

New skipper Maro Itoje showed his captaincy smarts, making sure that Ben O'Keeffe saw and heard the sly hold that Tadhg Beirne had of his leg, leaving the referee no option but to chalk off an Ireland try.

It was promising.

Having trailed at the break in every Six Nations match last year, England reached 40 minutes five ahead.

It could have been even better.

They were hobbled by Smith's sin-binning for 10 minutes.

After some courageous defence it was only on the last passage of that power-play that Ireland managed to score, as James Lowe shrugged off Alex Mitchell like a wet cagoule to put in Jamison Gibson Park.

The Aviva jangled with nerves at the interval.

Memories of 2019, when an unfancied England side plotted the perfect opening-day heist to derail Ireland, suddenly seemed more vivid.

By full-time though they, like England, had disintegrated.

They say you go bankrupt two ways, slowly, then all at once. That was exactly how England's plunged into scoreboard red.

Murley lost his bearings under a high ball and Bundee Aki rampaged over from the resulting pressure to level things.

Two needless pushes – one by Slade in the back of Mack Hansen, another by Itoje at the lineout – took England from the Ireland 22m to under their own posts and behind in the match.

Chandler Cunningham-South, off the bench, caught Hugo Keenan in the air and then singularly failed to lay anything on Lowe as the Ireland wing charged through to set up Beirne for a try and a 20-10 Ireland advantage.

Murley fluffed another high ball, Harry Randall shanked a box-kick straight up in the air and error compounded error. Ireland chopped, changed and charged away to victory.

England's replacements, by contrast, couldn't add impetus.

Having seen his bold plan promise so much and deliver so little, Borthwick pointed to Ireland's greater depth of experience.

"You are starting to see a team who are learning how to really move the ball and develop our attack," he said of his own side.

"Ultimately we came up short, but I think there's elements we'll take and build that show the progress.

"Ireland are a world-class team and have been for a long time. They have been in the top four consistently. That experience told in the third quarter."

Ireland also benefit from a coherence that comes from four provinces, compared to 10 Premiership clubs.

Those are the big structural issues, but Test rugby is a melting pot of grand plans and tiny details from which coaches have to forge results.

And there are plenty of problems that fall firmly in the Borthwick's in-tray.

Most pressing is England's inability to deliver an 80-minute performance.

Aled Walters, the conditioning guru who quit England for Ireland last year, stalked the sidelines and will have enjoyed how his current team overwhelmed his former one.

If it is an issue around the quality of players, rather than their conditioning, is the bench right?

If it is a matter of experience rather than quality, should those fringe players have had more of run-out in the two meetings against Japan this year?

As it stands, two wins over the Brave Blossoms are England's only victories in their last nine matches. Two years into the job, England's winning percentage under Borthwick is less than 50%.

France, buoyed by Antoine Dupont's return and experience of a 53-10 win on their last visit to Twickenham, loom next weekend.

England have made their fans plenty of promise, but wins mean more than words. And they have been in painfully short supply.