Years of complacency force Borthwick into decision on team's path

England's head coach may have nothing tolosein promoting younger players as ageing servants struggle

- Robert Kitson

Back when Martin Johnson was England's head coach he often used the same phrase when potentially awkward situations arose. "It is what it is," he would say before cautioning his audience against getting overly carried away in either defeat or victory. It seldom made for attention-grabbing copy but you could understand it from his perspective. Sometimes there is no instant answer to life's most pressing questions.

It certainly felt that way at Murrayfield at the weekend. Scotland, as most suspected, looked a better and more cohesive side than England. The visitors, again as widely expected, found the Scots to be tougher opponents than either Italy or Wales. Barring a remarkable upturn, consequently, England look set for a below-par Six Nations return for the fourth year running.

Anyone surprised by that scenario has been paying insufficient attention. The last time England enjoyed a big Six Nations win away from home against fancied opposition was in Dublin in 2019. They have changed umpteen coaches, support staff, players, captains and gameplans in the interim, only to see others pull way ahead and relegate them to mid-table mediocrity.

Four successive Calcutta Cup defeats can hardly be dismissed as a blip or a lucky flash in the Murrayfield pan. And how and why does a country with just two professional sides, a worryingly shallow domestic talent pool and squeezed financial resources now embarrass their supposedly better-stocked neighbours on an annual basis? Particularly when England were so yawningly dominant in this fixture a decade ago that Scotland could not muster a solitary point against them at home.