Owen Farrell says England’s players are hurting after suffering their biggest home defeat of all time at the hands of France on Saturday.
England were thrashed 53-10 in the Six Nations game as the defending champions ran in seven tries to end an 18-year wait for a Twickenham win.
Steve Borthwick’s side were taken apart physically on one of the darkest days in the history of English rugby.
“As an England player, you never expect to be in this situation,” said Farrell.
“I don’t think you ever expect to lose like that at home as an England team. You don’t expect to lose like that anywhere as an England team.
“The result and the scoreline are hugely disappointing for us. It’s never nice. Most of the people in the changing room have been through it at some stage. Not normally with England – definitely not normally with England.
“I’m gutted. Everybody in the changing room is disappointed to lose in the fashion that we did.”
Farrell started the game on the bench as he was dropped for Marcus Smith, with the hosts hoping to employ a free-flowing style of attack against a perceived immobile French pack.
But France had too much power and dominated the contact, which limited the quality of ball Smith received.
“When you end up behind on the scoreboard and you’re chasing, sometimes things turn out like that,” said Farrell, who was introduced off the bench for Henry Slade in the 46th minute.
“I’m not sure it’s a true reflection of our team but credit to France for the way they played, they were clinical. They got away early on and it was hard for us to get back into the game.”
Having been so ruthlessly exposed by the second best team in the world, England travel to Ireland – the side ranked number one – in their final game of the contest next weekend.
Farrell says England are “chomping at the bit” to rectify their performance against the side, who are coached by his father Andy.
“The end goal is not any different for us because we’ve got to improve and we knew that before this game. We definitely know it after. We have to improve together,” he added.
“This will make us have a good look at ourselves and I imagine that after this everybody is chomping at the bit to get going again.”
Source – BBC Sport
