Even on the most serene days no one would describe coaching England as a relaxing gig. With his side’s opening November Test looming on Sunday week, Steve Borthwick is already faced with assorted injury-related complications at precisely the moment he needs to start finding lasting answers to a range of fundamental selection questions. The untimely training field absence of Fin Smith, pencilled in to be England’s starting No 10, is a prime example.
With the two leading midfield candidates to face Australia – Seb Atkinson and Bernhard Janse van Rensburg – also unable to train this week, Smith’s calf injury has materialised at the worst possible moment. Add the Bath flanker Guy Pepper, who limped off against Gloucester last Friday, and suddenly there is a hint of pre-Halloween gloom hanging over England’s preparations. There is also the bigger picture.
At various times, Borthwick has been urged to base his selections around dominant club sides in Northampton, Bath and Saracens. How unfortunate, then, that all three went down in a sodden, windblown heap at the weekend. Nor does it help that the two most effervescent England‑qualified back-rowers this season, Jack and Tom Willis, ply their trade in France and are ineligible.
On top of everything else, there is the small matter of Borthwick being required to manage the increasing number of squad members itching to punch Henry Pollock’s lights out. To say Ollie Chessum and the other Leicester players who squared up to the Saints back‑rower during the East Midlands derby on Saturday were unhappy with their England “buddy” would be putting it mildly. Competitive tension is an inevitable part of the game, but, from Borthwick’s perspective, a “them and us” split within the national squad would be ruinous.
Because, in the end, there is only one overarching question that matters: how can England win the World Cup next year? The debate then becomes less about week-to-week contingencies and necessitates some longsighted vision. This next month is effectively Borthwick’s last chance to identify his preferred combinations before the World Cup and that opportunity absolutely cannot be wasted.
Nor can England afford a repeat of the turmoil that compromised their plans before the last World Cup. In the semi-final against South Africa, there were a mere seven surviving starters – Freddie Steward, Jonny May, Manu Tuilagi, Owen Farrell, Jamie George, Maro Itoje and Tom Curry – and 10 of the matchday 23 from Eddie Jones’s last hurrah as head coach against the Boks less than a year earlier. Given the circumstances, England did well to scramble as far as they did.
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