George Ford blasts England for record Twickenham defeat against Barbarians who trained hungover
Co-captain ashamed of shambles in Eddie Jones' worst loss in charge as they ship 50 points at home for the first time ever
GEORGE FORD slated England after they suffered a record Twickenham defeat to a Barbarians side who were HUNGOVER for their final team run.
The Red Rose co-captain was fuming at his side’s defensive shambles.
They shipped more than 50 points at home for the first time in history — in what was also Eddie Jones’ most horrific defeat.
To make matters worse, the chief tormentor was hat-trick hero and England exile Chris Ashton.
The humiliation for England came just days after Ashton tore up London dressed as a hippie as part of the Baa-Baas 1970s fancy dress night.
Bristol and Baa-Baas coach Pat Lam even admitted he had to film their third and final training session in London’s Hyde Park as most of his “half-cut” players would never remember the game-plan.
He said: “I knew even though they might be half-cut in the morning they could still see the pictures.”
Asked if it was embarrassing, punch-drunk Ford said: “It is, yeah. It’s not great, is it? We didn’t start well and some of the tries seemed like soft scores.
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“I know there were some great scores from the Baa-Baas but defence is a mental thing, an effort thing, an attitude thing.
“If you’re not quite there from a mental point of view and an attitude point of view, you’re going to get hurt.
“We are massively disappointed. No matter what game you are playing in, when you put the England shirt on you expect to be better than that.
“We understand that the step up from club rugby to playing world class international players is a big one — and we learnt that lesson today.”
The mega-rich Red Roses have been in camp for two weeks — one in Brighton and the other at their multi-million pound state-of-the-art base in Surrey.
In contrast, the fun-loving Barbarians have been together for just five days, have never played together and spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday out on the razzle, before playing some champagne rugby.
They were 21-0 up after just 12 minutes on the way to inflicting on Jones’ side their fourth defeat on the spin after their worst Six Nations in history.
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A Victor Vito brace as well as scores from Semi Radrada, Malakai Fekitoa, Sitaleki Timani and Finn Russell put the icing on the Baa-Baas cake. Piers Francis (two), Elliot Daly, Zach Mercer, Joe Launchbury and Jonny May ran in tries for the hosts.
Ahead of the gruelling First Test against South Africa a week on Saturday, Aussie Jones said: “In the first 20 minutes, we struggled to adjust to the speed of the game. We got a bit shocked by it.
“We made some crucial errors and it ended up costing us the game. A number of players just struggled to cope with the speed of the game.”