Captain Courtney Lawes concedes discipline is an issue for England after Billy Vunipola is given a red card during World Cup warm-up match; Vunipola's sending-off follows Owen Farrell's red card incident and head coach Steve Borthwick admits England face 'another week of disruption'
Sunday 20 August 2023 18:03, UK
Another key player sent off and another red card has haunted England’s preparations ahead of the impending Rugby World Cup.
Fly-half Owen Farrell is at the centre of a controversy as World Rugby appeals his red card last week being overturned.
Now, during England's 29-10 defeat in a warm-up match against Ireland on Saturday, No 8 Billy Vunipola was also dismissed for launching his shoulder into Andrew Porter's head.
Vunipola's red card means if he now gets a subsequent ban, as expected, he could be a doubt for at least some of the Rugby World Cup.
It's another major issue for a beleaguered England team.
Their captain Courtney Lawes lamented: "We really hurt ourselves in certain areas [on Saturday], way too many turnovers, discipline an issue again. So we're pretty disappointed with that."
There was no malice in Vunipola's action, he insisted.
"Split-second decisions, things happen, people want to get us on the front foot and unfortunately mistakes like that happen," he told Prime Video in a post-match interview.
"People aren't doing this on purpose, it's not we need to just tackle lower," he continued. "What more can you do? We're not trying to hurt each other as I say, split-second decisions, sometimes mistakes happen.
"We've got to try and make the sport safe for everyone who plays and that's why sanctions like this are put into place and we got a red card for it."
But he added: "It's going to continue to be part and parcel of the game unfortunately. The only thing you can do really is do your best to get on with it, don't let it get your head down."
He looked to take positives from the 29-10 loss.
"We never give up and that is something to take away. We continue to press on, continue to try and improve," Lawes said. "Not the performance we wanted at all. We knew it was going to be hard away from home against the No 1-ranked team in the world.
"Regardless of what happened, we found ourselves under the sticks way more than we wanted to today but it was always positive messages and on to the next job."
England coach Steve Borthwick acknowledged difficult days lie ahead for his team.
"It's going to be another week of disruption. We knew that was coming already [with Owen Farrell's hearing on Tuesday], it's now been amplified by the situation with Billy," he told Prime Video.
"We certainly put a large emphasis on discipline and safety. We've talked about that, we've had plenty of conversations about it.
"What we need do to is take that incident in isolation itself and look at the incident the previous week, but we also need to ensure the penalty count away from that tackle area also improves.
"One of the things is control what we can control and with 15 men on the pitch there was a tightness in that game, but when we went to 14 men against Ireland we certainly struggled.
"We've got the players and if we get possession in the opposition half, we need to take our chances to score points."
Ireland head coach Andy Farrell expects referees to be "red-hot" on foul play during the World Cup and says his side are striving to be rugby's most disciplined team.
He told reporters: "There are cards everywhere at the minute.
"There's a realisation that at the start of a competition, certainly in World Cups, referees are always going to be red-hot on stuff so making sure that we're the most disciplined side is something that we're chasing down."
On the Vunipola incident, Farrell said: "It's a red card that somebody will have a look at and make the right decision. It is what it is.
"We're seeing more and more of that. It just highlights for us massively that it isn't just the tackle height, it's discipline in general."
