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The 20-year-old rejection that Steve Borthwick hasn't forgotten
By Liam Heagney
A rejection from 20 years ago weighed on the mind of Steve Borthwick when he held individual talks on Sunday morning with the 10 players he cut loose from the England Rugby World Cup squad.
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The head coach generated headlines for his surprise axing of Henry Slade and his sudden loss of faith in Alex Dombrandt, one of the four players along with Freddie Steward, Ellis Genge and Lewis Ludlam to start all six games since taking over last December from Eddie Jones.
Rather than back Slade, who started four Six Nations games, Borthwick has now placed his trust in Joe Marchant, who started just once in the spring before getting the No13 jersey last Saturday versus Wales in Cardiff. Vunipola didn’t even feature all in the championship, Dombrandt being first-choice every time.
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It must be a head wrecker for these players to suddenly not be involved in the Test squad and Borthwick had 2003 on his mind regarding the way he delivered the bad news to Slade, Dombrandt and the other eight unwanted players.
First capped in 2001, Borthwick had high hopes of featuring at Australia 2023 having toured with England that year, but a call while training with Bath instead shattered that ambition and left him looking on from afar as Clive Woodward’s squad tasted World Cup glory.
“All those conversations are particularly challenging conversations, particularly tough for the player,” he said when asked for an insight into how he dealt with Slade, Dombrandt and co. “Having been in the players’ shoes, I still remember where I was when I got the phone call saying I wasn’t picked in a World Cup squad.
“I still remember what was said. So I think ensuring those conversations are clear and those conversations have a real empathy. They’re tough.
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“I was on the Recreation Ground in Bath, just off the back of where the stands are. That is where I was, I was in training when I got the call,” he added, but he refused to divulge exactly what was said to him by Woodward. “That is for me to remember.”
He was similarly schtum regarding the specifics of the various rejection chats he conducted at the weekend in Cardiff following England’s 9-20 defeat in their opening Summer Nations Series match. Instead, he only offered generalisations but insisted the decision-making process was above board and proper.
“Clearly there was a lot of deliberation: back row, centre, back three. That is where the final calls came down to. The selection process has been a series of ongoing meetings, the collation of information to inform the picture.
“Going into Saturday night we were pretty clear on what the final selection decisions were and also very clear what the key questions that needed to be answered within the selection process, so very structured and clear in that way.
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“The final couple of calls were very tight calls and we finished that meeting and it was down to me to make the final decision on those calls.
“The document that I had written back in June won’t be too far from where we ended up at. It has been an ongoing process, we have observed and looked and challenged our thinking, had multiple meetings along this path to see what the right squad is. We knew it we were announcing early in comparison to other teams.”
