STADIO OLIMPICO — The bone-headed yellow card picked up by England’s captain Maro Itoje in the second half of his team’s historic first ever defeat by Italy was a pivotal symbol of the shocking recent collapse under head coach Steve Borthwick.
Itoje’s slap of the ball from the hands of Italy scrum-half Alessandro Fusco was a slap in the face for Borthwick’s England plans, and either the message from the boss is not getting through, or the boss is delivering it in the wrong way.
Because Borthwick had specifically pleaded in public a few days before this match for his team to stop leaving themselves a man short at crucial moments.
And now Borthwick is left with the hope that his bosses at Twickenham will both comprehend and accept how the twitching corpse of England’s Six Nations campaign can be defibrillated into life for the World Cup in Australia in autumn next year.
This ruin in Rome on top of defeats by Scotland in Edinburgh and Ireland by a record score at home have seen the structure of the England team and the consistency of selection that Borthwick previously placed so much value in have fallen apart.
AT THE 33RD TIME OF ASKING… ITALY HAVE BEATEN ENGLAND! LOOK AT THESE SCENES! pic.twitter.com/KdDRjoFXEB
— ITV Rugby (@ITVRugby) March 7, 2026There is a problem with the players or with the coaches, or both, and Borthwick cannot be more than another disastrous result or two away from the RFU deciding it’s him.
Itoje and Tom Curry were yellow carded in the 48-7 win over Wales with which England began this Six Nations – their 12th straight win at the time which does give Borthwick some credit in the bank.
Henry Arundell saw two yellows and a red in Scotland, and Freddie Steward and Henry Pollock did so against the Irish, and now Itoje followed Sam Underhill to the sidelines midway through the second half in the Olympic Stadium.
As Borthwick himself said afterwards: “At 18-10 [up] it was exactly where we wanted to be. Then we went back 30 metres for a penalty and a yellow card, which is then followed by another yellow card and in that 10 to 15 minutes the momentum swung.”
Underhill slammed into a tackle and went off for causing a head-on-head contact, when England were eight points up.
Itoje’s yellow a few minutes later was more inexplicable.
The England and Saracens captain often pushes the line of legality, as all forwards do, but his reach for the ball was very risky and it was punished as a deliberate slap down.
Borthwick cited “the team’s growth in the last period of time” which is a word cloud that needs someone – Borthwick himself, he hopes – to make sense of what that means.
He also mentioned how England went from easybeats in 2022 to finishing third, under him, at the 2023 World Cup.
In this run of setbacks, England’s twin pillars of kicking to retrieve the ball and keeping 15 men on the field, both turned to salt.
Ireland further kicked the legs from under the Borthwick masterplan by shattering the previous trust in the fly-half George Ford, and the idea of a fast and mobile back five of the pack pulled apart.
And now all England’s roads led to Rome, and this new low.
What is the Italian for déjà vu?
Borthwick was captain of England in 2010, when he endured public ridicule and infamy for putting a brave face on a narrow, scrappy win in the Italian capital.
squareRUGBY UNIONI asked every Six Nations captain to pick their favourite away stadium
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England scraped home 17-12 but a stoical Borthwick refused to chime in with the mood music, saying: “Obviously we want to win all our games by as big a margin as we can, but we did some fantastic stuff, we created chances but didn’t take them.”
Fast forward 16 years to today, and Borthwick after three years as head coach will take his team to face the title favourites France in Paris next Saturday with more unwanted achievements staring them in the face.
England have never finished a Six Nations competition with just one win – mainly because up to now they had beaten Italy and at least one other opponent.
They have also not lost four matches in a Championship – whether it was Five Nations or Six – since 1976, and only twice before that since the start of the Five Nations in 1910.
The yellow cards here allowed Italy fly-half Paolo Garbisi to kick two penalty goals then his cross-kick on 71 minutes found Monty Ioane who rounded Tom Roebuck and linked with Tommaso Menoncello.
Where Borthwick had gambled on a midfield three of Fin Smith, Seb Atkinson for his third cap and Tommy Freeman, the Italians knew they could rely on the electric Menoncello and his regular, settled partner Juan Ignacio Brex.
Menoncello battered past Elliot Daly, flew clear of Roebuck and Smith, and passed inside for Leonardo Marin to run in a try that will fly immediately rugby’s hall of fame – while plunging Borthwick and his fog of confusions into a familiar feeling of infamy.
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