Tom Curry believes England players must step up and shoulder the responsibility for their late collapses, insisting there can be no excuses as Steve Borthwick’s side seek to return to winning ways against Australia.
England have lost their last three Tests – all against New Zealand – after putting themselves into winning positions, only to succumb to late defeats. Their final match of the Six Nations against France was a similar story and as a result England head into Saturday’s clash with the Wallabies with a record of just four wins from their nine Tests in 2024.
Last Saturday, England were eight points to the good heading into the final quarter but their efforts to close out the match rather than go for the jugular came back to haunt them. Borthwick has come in for criticism for the timing of his replacements, in particular taking Marcus Smith and Ben Spencer off with England in the ascendancy, but Curry is adamant the buck stops with the players rather than the coaching staff.
“As players, we need to step up,” said Curry. “We made mistakes and we’ve recognised that. It is frustrating but we just have to step up. I can only talk about [matches] I was involved in, especially the summer [tour of New Zealand]. The last quarter, we as players definitely have to stand up. It’s about the full 80 minutes. There’s stuff we were doing in the last quarter that we weren’t doing in the first 60.
“If we solved this the whole time, sport would be easy, wouldn’t it? That’s the beauty of it; we have to find a way. There’s nothing coming externally that we haven’t heard. The coaches … we’ve had all the right messages. We as players need to step up. There are no excuses.
“The review with Steve was concise with good points about how we move into this week. I think that is a good way of understanding how it went wrong, because it did go wrong. But then we have to reframe it for this week and turn it into our focus on Australia.”
Against New Zealand, England conceded just one penalty in the first half and by the hour mark a total of just two. By full time they had given away a further five, however, and discipline has been identified as a key area of improvement.
“[Steve] recognises it a lot in terms of the discipline trends, winning games, how many penalties we need to be under,” added Curry. “So we’re definitely aware of it. They are so hot on it in training, which is good. But I think there’s moments where there’s different reasons and we’ve just got to make sure we don’t let those reasons creep in.
“We understand in terms of the trends, the referees and stuff and the way the game’s going, you do have to focus on it for the whole 80. Especially, you know, the last 20 when tired, you’ve probably got different combinations. So we definitely have to push that final 20. It’s not just the last bit. Every section is just as important.”
