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The 'most interesting piece' in the Borthwick puzzle - Andy Goode

(Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

It’s good to have the worst-kept secret in rugby out of the bag but the appointment of Steve Borthwick as the England head coach is just the first box of many that need to be ticked in the coming weeks. Borthwick is the most hard-working and meticulous of men but one of his great strengths in his short career as a head honcho has been his ability to surround himself with the best calibre of people and that work has only just begun.

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Confirmation that Kevin Sinfield is joining him as defence coach is absolutely crucial, with Brett Hodgson presumably leaving before he has even started, but it is the England attack that has looked the worst part of their game for the past couple of years.

It’s this appointment of an attack coach that will be the most interesting piece of the puzzle and it’s hard to see the present incumbent Martin Gleeson staying on with the name of Sam Vesty being touted most vociferously at the moment.

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Vesty has worked wonders with the Northampton attack in recent years. They play a really attractive brand of rugby but whether that can marry up with the brilliant basics Borthwick has spoken about and his philosophy on the game is debatable.

Anyone who has watched Leicester over the past couple of seasons won’t be expecting a particularly expansive game plan and will be expecting plenty of intelligent kicking but the Tigers have played winning rugby and if England does the same, everyone will be happy.

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Press conferences will be quieter, more mundane affairs and although it was clear Borthwick did feel the need to show a slightly different side at his unveiling, you know you are not going to get the same sound bites as under Eddie Jones. That could become an issue if things aren’t going well but if he gets things right on the pitch, with just a little more engagement from players as well as coaches, the inspiration and reconnection with fans that he has been speaking about should come naturally.

We know Borthwick is a Jones disciple having worked under him a few years ago, but it was good to hear him acknowledge that England are not in the top three in the world in any facet of the game. He also emphasised that the focus will always be on the next game rather than the next World Cup.

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Jones was a very prescriptive head coach and Borthwick will want to put his own stamp on this team but he is cut from a similar cloth. No stone will be left unturned but anyone expecting to see tries being run in from deep left, right and centre are likely to be disappointed.

Borthwick was spot on about the need to get back to basics, though. France are rightly getting a lot of plaudits after winning every Test in 2022 and they have scored some excellent tries along the way, but the reason for their success is the implementation of a simple and effective game plan that has allowed their talented players to shine.

England’s players have looked confused and their game plan muddled of late and I fully expect that to change straight away. Marcus Smith may still be injured as preparations for the Guinness Six Nations begin but I feel we will see Owen Farrell revert to fly-half anyway.

I said ahead of the autumn that Farrell was the form man and it should be one or other starting now and nothing we have seen from Borthwick so far suggests that Smith will be the player he entrusts with putting his ideas into action.

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The Harlequins No10 is enormously talented and he will have a role to play off the bench under Borthwick, hopefully with the potential to become the starter in due course. But I can’t see him starting against Scotland in February.

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The England captain’s armband has been passed from pillar to post a bit recently as well and that decision will be a fascinating one. I can see it being Ellis Genge’s time now, assuming Borthwick isn’t holding a grudge over his infamous hug with Pat Lam this time last year.

Genge led Leicester to the Gallagher Premiership title under Borthwick in June and has gradually become a standout leader in the England environment as well without having the armband bestowed upon him.

It is the assistant coach choices that will be the most intriguing, though, and RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney has openly said that “within the confines of a certain reasonableness”, Borthwick will be backed to bring in who he wants.

Whether Leicester’s head of physical performance Aled Walters eventually fits within those confines we will have to wait and see but he doesn’t at the moment and we know he has had a massive impact at Tigers as well as having won the World Cup with South Africa in 2019.

As it stands, Sinfield is the only man the RFU have been able to announce alongside Borthwick and the fact he wasn’t physically by the new head coach’s side for his unveiling because he was attending Doddie Weir’s memorial service says a lot about him.

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From his playing career and coaching ability to, more importantly, the superhuman fundraising efforts and physical challenges he has undertaken in the name of MND research, you can’t help but be inspired by him and he is certain to galvanise players.

There might not be an instant injection of free-flowing rugby but the unveiling of Borthwick does bring with it a renewed sense of optimism and a fresh start after a poor couple of years for England.

The men in white have only won one of their last five Tests against the Scots, who they face in the new head coach’s first game in charge in just over six weeks’ time, so nobody should be getting ahead of themselves – but home games against Scotland and Italy is as good a start as Borthwick could wish for.

A trip to Cardiff follows before the top two teams in the northern hemisphere await in the final couple of rounds. By that point, England fans might just feel able to dream again.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and the RFU ripped their plans up a fortnight ago but the process of rebuilding has now begun and the hard work starts here. There is nobody more hard-working than Borthwick and if his substance-over-style approach brings winning rugby back to Twickenham, then he will achieve his aim of getting England fans roaring again.

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Flankly 0 minute ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

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Nickers 9 minutes ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

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Nickers 38 minutes ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

I thought we made a lot of progress against that type of defence by the WC last year. Lots of direct running and punching holes rather than using width. Against that type of defence I think you have to be looking to kick on first phase when you have front foot ball which we did relatively successfully. We are playing a lot of rugby behind the gain line at the moment. They are looking for those little interchanges for soft shoulders and fast ball or off loads but it regularly turns into them battering away with slow ball and going backwards, then putting in a very rushed kick under huge pressure.


JB brought that dimension when he first moved into 12 a couple of years ago but he's definitely not been at his best this year. I don't know if it is because he is being asked to play a narrow role, or carrying a niggle or two, but he does not look confident to me. He had that clean break on the weekend and stood there like he was a prop who found himself in open space and didn't know what to do with the ball. He is still a good first phase ball carrier though, they use him a lot off the line out to set up fast clean ball, but I don't think anyone is particularly clear on what they are supposed to do at that point. He was used really successfully as a second playmaker last year but I don't think he's been at that role once this year. He is a triple threat player but playing a very 1 dimensional role at the moment. He and Reiko have been absolutely rock solid on defence which is why I don't think there will be too much experimentation or changes there.

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