28 missed tackles against Ireland. 14 penalties. Two yellow cards. A defensive efficiency of just 70% against Ireland’s 81%. Eight rucks lost. Ireland making 289 metres post-contact, running eight linebreaks through a defensive structure that repeatedly bit on primary carriers and left the offload channel exposed with the predictability of a bus timetable.
And the week before that, 17 points conceded to Scotland inside the opening quarter at Murrayfield, a catalogue of missed tackles in the first half that allowed Huw Jones and Jamie Ritchie to score through the same gaping defensive channel within four minutes of each other, and Kyle Steyn evading 10 England defenders in a single run that cut the visiting defence to ribbons.
Two catastrophic opening quarters in successive weeks. A combined 39 points conceded before England located their defensive shape, their defensive intent or, it increasingly appears, their defensive architect.
This cannot be described as a one-off or a bad day at Murrayfield followed by a worse day at Twickenham. This is a pattern, and patterns have causes.
The question being asked loudly in the wreckage of back-to-back humiliations isn’t simply what is wrong with England‘s defence or what type of system they’re playing. The question is considerably more uncomfortable and considerably more damning than that. Who, exactly, is coaching it? And does whoever that person is actually know how?
The answer, when you excavate beneath the official titles and the carefully worded coaching announcements, is genuinely extraordinary. The combined knowledge of Test-level defensive excellence currently assembled inside England’s coaching group could be written on the edge of a postage stamp with a paint roller and still leave room for the collected works of Shakespeare.
The author
And the man who assembled that group is Steve Borthwick. Let us be absolutely clear about that before we go any further. Borthwick recruits, Borthwick decides and Borthwick signs off on every appointment, every role, every reshuffling of responsibilities that has brought England’s defensive coaching architecture to its current bewildering state. He is not a bystander in this crisis; moreover, he is its author.
Richard Wigglesworth is England’s defence coach. Let that settle for a moment, because it deserves to. Wigglesworth, the former scrum-half, one of the finest nines of his generation, a player whose entire career was built on the precision of his distribution and kicking, the timing of his service and the orchestration of attacking rugby, is now the man responsible for organising England’s defensive line at Test level. He made the switch in September 2025, moving from his role as senior assistant attack coach to take on the defensive brief as part of a reshuffle Borthwick designed and signed off on personally.
Here is the detail that makes this appointment impossible to understand on pure merit alone. Wigglesworth is a little more than just a Borthwick appointment. He is a Borthwick intimate. The two were teammates at Saracens, Wigglesworth then joined Borthwick at Leicester Tigers, playing under him before transitioning into coaching under him. When Borthwick left for the England job in December 2022, Wigglesworth expressed his personal gratitude publicly and warmly, describing what Borthwick had taught him and the friendship between them. Borthwick then brought him to England as attack coach in February 2023. Kevin Sinfield, also from the Leicester inner circle, came along at the same time.
The pattern of recruiting from a trusted and familiar circle is not incidental to what England are experiencing on successive Saturdays. Rather, it’s central to it.
Wigglesworth has been England’s defence coach for approximately five months. Five months, against a Six Nations field that exposed him with brutal efficiency at Murrayfield before finishing the job comprehensively at Twickenham. Scotland needed just 17 minutes to rack up 17 unanswered points through defensive lapses that were instantly recognisable to anyone who had seen them before. The following week Ireland needed barely 20 minutes to reach 22-0 through precisely the same categories of structural failure; misaligned drift, defenders biting on primary carriers, the narrow side and the edge left criminally unguarded. Five months of on-the-job learning in the most unforgiving classroom in European rugby, where the examination paper arrives every Saturday and the marking is done in real time on a scoreboard that tells no comfortable lies.
Byron McGuigan, the former Scotland winger who impressed genuinely as Sale’s defence coach and earned his England call-up on actual merit rather than personal history, is in the building. But bizarrely, his remit is specifically the back three, aerial defence and transition. He is doing that job well and the aerial contest numbers suggest his narrow brief is producing some results within its defined corridor. But his brief ends precisely where England’s most catastrophic defensive failures begin, the same failures that appeared against Scotland and then reappeared against Ireland with the grim familiarity of a problem that nobody between those two Saturdays had actually solved. He is coaching the roof while the foundations are collapsing beneath him, and that demarcation of responsibility was decided by Borthwick.
Want more from Planet Rugby? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for world-class coverage you can trust.
Confusion in the England camp was brutally exposed than on the edge and at the narrow side, which has been a defensive disaster across both defeats. Against Scotland, Steyn and Jones exploited the same channel repeatedly with almost casual ease. Against Ireland, the short side was attacked with a precision and frequency that suggested Ireland’s analysts had identified the identical weakness Scotland had already found and simply made the same map. The narrow side defence against teams that manipulate the ruck picture and attack the short side with this kind of precision is one of the most technically demanding responsibilities in defensive coaching. It requires clear ownership, clear communication and players who know with absolute certainty what their trigger points are. England have looked like a team receiving three different answers to the same question simultaneously on consecutive Saturdays.
Comment: Ireland place a bookend on difficult period as broken England back to square one
Which leaves Joe El-Abd, the former flanker brought in as defence coach in October 2024 to fill the void left by the departed Felix Jones, who then had his role shuffled sideways to working with the forwards as part of the September reshuffle that handed the defensive brief to Wigglesworth. A decision made by Borthwick. El-Abd is now an assistant coach working with the forward pack, yet his knowledge of Test rugby is precisely nil.
So to summarise the defensive coaching architecture of a team that has conceded 31 points to Scotland and 42 points to Ireland in successive Six Nations weekends; A former club back-row coaching the forwards whilst a former attack coaching scrum-half owns the defensive system and a former 10 cap winger manages the edges of it.
The one man who understood Test-level defensive systems from the inside out with genuine specialist authority, Jones, left for South Africa 18 months ago and was never adequately replaced. That replacement failure was Borthwick’s decision. The reshuffle that moved El-Abd sideways and handed the defensive brief to a former teammate, coaching pal and close friend was Borthwick’s decision. Every single element of this structure has Borthwick’s fingerprints on it.
Make no mistake about this; this is a coaching problem Borthwick built, and Scotland showed him exactly where it was broken before Ireland demolished it entirely.
Jones departure
Jones understood Test defence the way surgeons understand anatomy, with a depth of specialist knowledge that cannot be improvised or approximated by good intentions and sharp rugby brains repurposed from different disciplines. His departure left a wound that has never remotely healed and is now haemorrhaging points on consecutive Saturdays with a consistency that has moved well beyond coincidence into something structural, endemic and deeply serious.
Three separate occasions against Ireland where two England defenders bit simultaneously on the primary carrier, leaving the offload channel unguarded as if they had never seen the move, never been drilled against it, never been given the framework to recognise and respond. Scotland’s backline had found those same seams seven days earlier. Eight linebreaks conceded against Ireland. 28 defenders beaten individually. A defensive structure that looked not merely outplayed but architecturally unsound across two consecutive weekends against two different opponents who found the same answers to the same questions with the same ease.
Test-level defensive line coaching is a specialism as demanding and as technically precise as neurosurgery, and you would not ask a gifted orthopaedic surgeon to perform brain surgery simply because they are an excellent doctor, a trusted colleague and a good friend who works extremely hard. The outcome of that arrangement is entirely predictable. Scotland predicted it. Ireland confirmed it.
England’s players know it. They have asked for the sessions to fix it. The scoreboard has shown it twice in successive weeks against two opponents who needed no second invitation to exploit the same structural failures. And the man who built the structure that produced it sits in the coaches box wondering, apparently, why it keeps happening.
The answer, Steve, is in the mirror.