A shock can cause tremors and bring down buildings inside and out, but it can also open the fault lines that were already there to unobstructed view. A shock can be productive. Sometimes, it is hard to keep up with the pace of change when it happens. As the American writer and futurist Alvin Toffler said over 50 years ago, “The future always comes too fast and in the wrong order.”
He went on to claim the men and women best able to withstand the shocks of the future would be those who know how to ‘learn, unlearn and relearn’ what they think they already know. He quotes a Chinese proverb: “Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back.”
The loss of three professional clubs has shaken up the box of toys in English rugby at a historically deep level, but the effect has been to wake up all concerned parties to the collective needs of the game in the country. Now, it is a matter of keeping pace with the speed of change for the most conservative of rugby nations.
The Gallagher Premiership is entering a boom period where the league leads all others in the metrics that matter: ball-in-play time – over 38 minutes per game this season; tries scored – around three-and-a-half per team per game; and progressive refereeing – an average of 20 penalties per game last season with league leader Luke Pearce coming in at only 17. England, and English rugby supporters, have never had it so good.
Only last week the RFU showed how proactive it has become by signing the leading 17 players in the country to hybrid central contracts. Instead of receiving the typical matchday bonuses of £20,000 per match, stars such as Jamie George and Maro Itoje – both of whom were canvassing overseas contracts in the off-season – can now look forward to a one-off lump sum of £160,000, a national top-up to sweeten the ever-dwindling club salary pot.
Borthwick still has another eight contracts to award, bringing the grand total up to 25. Meanwhile, the top English players [sponsored by Itoje and George, along with Ellis Genge, Joe Marler and Anthony Watson] have gone further, establishing their own breakaway organisation [Team England Rugby] to supplant the old Rugby Players Association [RPA] and bring fresh energy to the task of representing the players’ ongoing concerns about welfare and commercial opportunity.
A new four-year agreement brokered by TER will negotiate financial terms for the players, help manage their workload and undertake research to underpin new rest and recuperation regimes in the future. It is offsetting future shocks by unlearning what did not work, and learning and relearning what does indeed make the rugby world go round. As George commented: “Reducing games from 35 to 30 demonstrates a commitment to player welfare that we believe is crucial for the success of English rugby.
“However, the intensity of international rugby is greater than ever, and we believe that specific international rest protocols need to be explored.
“We hope that the results of the [TER] research project will support this.”
The one area which needs addressing is the success of the national team, which has been treading water ever since the high of a World Cup final appearance in 2019.
Since Eddie Jones’ last hurrah, a win at the 2020 Six Nations, England have flatlined. They have finished with two wins and three losses in three of the past four tournaments and only showed signs of becoming a live contender again midway through the 2024 competition, with a breakthrough victory over champions Ireland at Twickenham. Borthwick currently sits rather uncomfortably atop a 54% win rate, second-last among England coaches of the professional era.
The struggle to keep pace with change was only underlined in very black ink by the unexpected departure of two ex-Springbok coaches [defence co-ordinator Felix Jones and strength & conditioning specialist Aled Walters] who know what it takes to win major championships.
Jones was reportedly dismayed by ‘an unstable working environment’ and resigned only eight months into the job. It was an unwanted echo of the Jones regime, which was marked by the constant comings and goings of staff at all levels of the backroom.
The edge of the knife was then sharpened by Walters’ announcement he would be joining England’s major rivals Ireland. The Premiership board’s rejection of Borthwick’s approach for the services of fitness guru Phil Morrow [the current team manager at his old club Saracens] on a job-share basis confirmed all is not well in the state of Denmark. Stilettos are gleaming behind the arras, even if they are not poised to strike a fatal blow.
To prove the doubting Thomases wrong, Borthwick needs to get off on the right foot by beating the All Blacks on Saturday. At 17-13 up after 50 minutes of the second July Test at Eden Park his charges were poised to land a knockout blow but could not find the finish. If England are not seen to be advancing from that game, they will be perceived instead to be dropping back in the rugby arms race.
England need to consolidate the attacking gains made by the Premiership to sew club and country together out on the field. Two of the key backline choices will be at numbers nine and 15. With Northampton’s outstanding Alex Mitchell out injured, Borthwick will pick from Bristol scatback Harry Randall, Leicester schemer Jack van Poortvliet and Bath strategist-in-chief Ben Spencer at scrum-half. Only one of that trio plays at a club which values all-out attack above all else. That is Randall, but he probably sits only third in the depth chart.
At full-back the England supremo will need to screw his courage to the sticking point and stay with Saints’ George Furbank ahead of Tiger Freddie Steward. The presence of the Northampton 15 was key to England’s mid-tournament resurgence in the Six Nations, and his absence may well have cost England the second Test in New Zealand.
Borthwick’s first task is to relearn the good things from the Six Nations turnaround in round four. Against Ireland in March, England suddenly discovered the ability to run the ball back from kicks with meaningful intent.
The actions of Furbank highlight just why professional coaches place such high value on ‘reloading’ and ‘double involvements’ in the modern game. Where in the amateur epoch overlaps were easy to create given the relatively low fitness values of the players, in the professional era they are often generated by one man’s ability to get off the floor from a piece of action and become part of another in double-quick time.
In this instance Furbank has already run 40m into centre-field and passed to Tommy Freeman to set up the first position when he is back in the line to deliver a key pass and create space down the left for Ollie Lawrence to score in the second. The Saints man was back in position to finish another kick return opportunity in the second half.
With Steward in for Furbank at Eden Park, England did not have the same cutting edge to their return game, the range of movement in their backfield was reduced and the Northampton man’s ability to function as an extra distributor was absent.
If the big Leicester full-back runs straight at Rieko Ioane’s outside shoulder there is every possibility for Immanuel Feyi-Waboso to pull out of his slipstream late, cut through and make the bust – but instead Steward decides to take on Sam Cane full frontal, and there are few less profitable activities on a rugby field than that.
While Furbank has played a lot of his rugby in the 10 jersey, Steward is a full-back of the old school: ever-dependable under the high ball on defence, but not the same threat to reload quickly, or manipulate a defence with the pass on attack.
The snapshot presents just the kind of seminal opportunity contemporary attacks are looking to create and exploit, with three-man depth arrayed against the final defender Sevu Reece. It is the sort of chance Furbank’s Northampton are primed to exploit, but Steward can find nothing better to do than give a pass to Furbank’s club-mate Freeman with the defender already on top of him.
One aspect of the game in Auckland Borthwick’s men will be looking to relearn at Twickenham is the use of the cross-kick on attack. It bailed them out of the first situation and it generated another score just before half-time.
In both cases the kick goes from left to right, and in both it is the combination of Damian McKenzie and Mark Telea whose defence is exposed by two different England wingmen. If those two start at the old cabbage match, Marcus Smith will be rubbing his hands in anticipation.
The game in Auckland turned on a decision by referee Nic Berry in the 53rd minute.
Berry is probably the premier official in the southern hemisphere at the time of speaking, but he somehow managed to satisfy himself with the award of a scrum for the knock-on by the Blues’ wing, despite the availability a three-on-one overlap for England – with only D-Mac left standing in the way – if the ball moves beyond Smith. It deprived the men in white of a likely score and they did not even reap the reward of a yellow card on Telea for their troubles.
Toffler was prophet ahead of his time, and his book Future Shock [written in 1970] underlined the ever-increasing speed of change in the modern world: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
It is the same in rugby, and particularly for England. Developments are moving at such a pace that the national game needs to keep up with a newly trimmed-back Premiership. The shocks are coming thick and fast – new hybrid contracts, new players’ representatives, a new game at club level.
Borthwick is under pressure to match that speed to learn new habits, unlearn old ones and relearn the key criteria for further improvement. His selection against the All Blacks will tell England supporters most of what they need to know about the team’s future. Let’s leave the last word to Toffler: “In the past, you made a decision, and that was it. Now, you make a decision and you say, ‘What happens next?’ There’s always a next.”
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