England's humiliation at hands of France underlines scale of rebuilding job for Steve Borthwick

England collapsed to their heaviest loss at Twickenham of all time after leaking seven tries, enabling Les Bleus to record a first Guinness Six Nations win at the venue since 2005.

France, positioned second in the global rankings and the current Grand Slam champions, were responsible for one of the darkest days in English rugby history and Borthwick admitted the performance was not good enough.

“We’re incredibly disappointed. Immense credit to France – their power, pace and class showed. It shows where the gap is,” said Borthwick.

“No one is under any illusions about what we need to do. We’ve been pretty up front about that throughout.

“We wanted to understand exactly how the development of this team has gone and where we’re at compared to the best teams in the world. We fell considerably short, that’s the reality.

“The key element is that we know where we are. It shows just how much work we have to do. France showed just how much better they are than us.

“I said we’d have a good understanding of where we’re at as a team by the end of the Championship and you can see how much work we’ve got to do.

“France were able to dominate the tackle area and offload. While we understood that was a major threat we weren’t able to stop it.”

Having been thrashed out of sight by France in their third heaviest defeat of all time, England must now pick themselves up off the floor before taking on Six Nations pacesetters Ireland in Dublin.

“I’m pretty disappointed and we have a lot of work to do and it shows where we are at,” said captain Ellis Genge.

“We lost the contact area and chased tails and everyone will write us off and that’s brilliant – we just want to get better.

“France are brilliant and have shown why they are No 2 in the world and we are way off where we want to be.

“We probably need to be a lot better in the contact area and that is down to the forwards and there were some harsh lessons.”

Worryingly for Borthwick, his team were pulverised in contact as the gravest of a host of failings on a day that will rank among the worst in the nation’s 152-year rugby history.

Many fans streamed out of Twickenham long before the final whistle while others booed in reaction to seeing England register their eighth defeat in their last 16 Tests, a run that includes one draw.

For Owen Farrell, the red rose captain who replaced Henry Slade in the 46th minute, it was a harrowing experience.

“As an England player you never expect to be in this situation," he said.

“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’s demotion to the bench to accommodate Marcus Smith at fly-half dominated the build-up to ‘Le Crunch’ with the swashbuckling Harlequins ringmaster picked with the aim of exposing France’s perceived mobility deficit in the forwards.

But power took centre stage as England were bullied in the contact area throughout, rendering the identity of their number 10 irrelevant as the irresistible World Cup hosts plundered seven tries, some of them works of art.

“When you end up behind on the scoreboard and you’re chasing, sometimes things turn out like that,” said Farrell.

“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.”

France boss Fabien Galthie was delighted by a victory that gives his side hope of retaining their title heading into the final round next weekend.

“I’ve been coming to Twickenham for a long while – 20 years. It’s emotional,” said Galthie.

“We played well, how we wanted to. We wanted to do that, we didn’t know how, but we wanted to do that.

“We’ve not been satisfied by our Six Nations. We wanted to do something here. The players wanted to put in a big game against England.”

England: Steward, Malins (Arundell 59), Slade (Farrell 46), Lawrence (Walker 61), Watson, M. Smith, van Poortvliet (Mitchell 46), Genge (Vunipola 65), George, Sinckler (Cole 65), Itoje, Chessum, Ludlam, Willis (Curry 53), Dombrandt (Ribbans 76).

France: Ramos, Penaud, Fickou, Danty, Dumortier, Ntamack, Dupont (Luca 69), Baille (Wardi 61), Marchand (Mauvaka 61), Aldegheri (Falatea 50), Flament, Willemse (Taofifenua 50), Cros, Ollivon (Macalou 63), Alldritt. Unused replacements: Falatea-Moefana, Jaminet.

Referee: B O'Keeffe (New Zealand).