Borthwick and George revel in upbeat finale

LONDON : England's nine-try, 59-14 thrashing of a callow Japan on Sunday allowed Steve Borthwick to sign off a depressing Autumn Series on a high and he certainly milked the positives from the victory that ended a run of five straight defeats.

England did play some great rugby and showed variety and ambition in attack and, although there is a huge caveat over the win given the paucity of the opposition, Borthwick revelled in the chance to celebrate a victory.

"I'm really pleased with the way the players approached the game and the way they kept being disciplined to try to play the way they wanted to play for 80 minutes," Borthwick said, well aware of how his team had fallen away in the last quarter so often this year.

"You can see the identity they're trying to build as a team. The team moves the ball, can score in different ways and some of the tries were exceptional. I think in the last four weeks, we've scored some really outstanding tries with the skill level of this group."

Captain Jamie George, who, along with his hooker replacement Luke Cowan-Dickie, scored two tries from rolling mauls, said he was also delighted with the way the players approached a game that was described by some observers as "lose-lose".

"My message to the team before the game was that I wanted to see how far we could take things, how much we could push," he said. "Often in a week like this, with the type of opposition that we had there, a lot of the focus needed to be on us because we weren't entirely sure what to expect from an Eddie Jones Japan team. In terms of the execution of the game plan, I thought it was fantastic."

Asked to sum up the four November games that brought nail-biting defeats to New Zealand and Australia and another loss to South