Four England talking points as Wales make Twickenham Six Nations visit

Steve Borthwick has developed a reputation during his time in charge of England for being a tinkerman when it comes to team selection. He sure likes upping the ante from week to week with his alterations but his 18th game in charge – this Saturday’s round two match versus Wales in London – has unusually seen him stick rather than twist with his choices.

Consistently rolling the dice hasn’t been a habit exclusive to Borthwick, as you have go to back to the 2019 Rugby World Cup final to find the last time that England named an unchanged team from one to game the next with Eddie Jones at the helm.

Borthwick’s no-change approach following his team’s three-point win away to Italy is quite the contrast to Wales, who have named a side that contains seven changes from their XV that narrowly lost to Scotland.

Here are the RugbyPass talking points with England looking to go two wins from two at the start of the Guinness Six Nations for the first time since 2019:

Load-sharing stat hints ambition

There has been a quiet air of confidence surrounding England in this build-up. The party line coming out of Stadio Olimpico was a level of satisfaction despite the three-point margin of victory worryingly being their narrowest ever against Italy, but what has been said since has souped up expectations that they are going in the right direction as they look to widen their playbook.

We’ll soon know if that optimism is on the money or gibberish akin to what was uttered during last year’s underwhelming Six Nations and Summer Series campaigns.

Rome admittedly wasn’t built in a day – and neither will this new England defence under Felix Jones, nor the Richard Wigglesworth attack now that the 2023 handbrake has loosened.

England losing the try count 3-2 to Italy was concerning, as was their repeated inability to break the Italian line in attack. That’s the sort of stuff Wales will take great heart from coming to Twickenham looking for a first Six Nations win in London since 2012, but that doesn’t mean the hosts shouldn’t be somewhat hopeful about achieving round two success.

A round-one statistic that caught the eye on the official Six Nations website was the list of the top 30 ball carriers from the three opening weekend matches.

England had a chart-topping eight players included compared to six from Wales and Ireland, five Italians, three Scots and two French.

It was no surprise to see Ben Earl top the category with 16 carries given his Test career-making Rugby World Cup but having Freddie Steward chip in with 11, Joe Marler, Will Stuart and Ethan Roots with nine each and then Henry Slade, Maro Itoje and Tommy Freeman all on eight hinted at an English willingness to spread the load by putting the ball through more hands than previously was the case.

Half-backs George Ford and Alex Mitchell were credited with 30 and 60 passes respectively. Now, of course, we have to factor in that unfancied Italy were the opposition but against South Africa in last October’s Rugby World Cup semi-final, Owen Farrell and Mitchell managed only a respective five and 19 passes despite their team having 56 per cent possession, the same percentage as England had in Rome.

There is a welcome ambition for change, it seems. Its delivery, though, needs a quickly improved end product.

Sport is entertainment, Steve!

The Twickenham atmosphere will be of huge interest. The once fortress venue has seen that reputation obliterated in recent times, the Jones era wrapping up with just one win in his last five outings and the Borthwick ‘improvement’ has been marginal with two wins from five home games in 2023.

Last August’s most recent loss in that combined sequence of just three wins in 10 was most damning. The upper tier at Twickenham was fully closed due to lack of home support and the grouping of Fijians in a lower tier corner were the ones that made the racket below.

With the rugby not going well, Twickenham has essentially become an outdoor pub where the fan interest is on getting the next round in rather than waiting for the next box kick and hoping it can spark a sudden change in England’s fortunes.

The fans are easy targets for criticism from the likes of Clive Woodward, the ex-England coach, but with ticket prices so high, they are well entitled to do what they want on their afternoon out.

It’s up to Borthwick’s team on the pitch to grab their attention and keep it away from the beer queues. The calibre of rugby produced in recent times had too often been dire.

Sport is entertainment, Steve. Give the fans what they want and they will row in with their support, but don't expect them to cheer for no good reason.

Don’t react, just ignore the trolls

You have to wonder what the game of rugby has become when a Test head coach is asked if he considered standing down a player due to the fear he could be exposed to social media abuse. That is exactly the query put to Borthwick on Thursday about his inclusion of Immanuel Feyi-Waboso as England’s 23rd man.

What has the faceless keyboard warriors up in arms about the 21-year-old is that he is Cardiff-born and reared, going on to represent Wales at age-grade level before joining up with Rob Baxter’s Exeter post the Wasps debacle and deciding to use the England eligibility secured through a grandmother to play for Borthwick’s team.

Wales can’t have sour grapes, surely. They had just as much an opportunity to bring Feyi-Waboso into their Test set-up as England did, but they lost out and should just suck it up. International allegiance these days is a fluid thing, anyway. Look at how former England prop Henry Thomas switched to the Welsh last year. You win some, you lose some...

The attention garnered by these ruthless online rugby pile-ons is extraordinary judging by how such attacks impacted last year on Owen Farrell and Tom Curry. The country-flipping Feyi-Waboso is now potentially their latest target, but he shouldn’t be.

Rather than inflame the situation by asking Borthwick about it and giving it publicity, rugby should just ignore the squabbling and not react. Let the authorities deal with the stuff that crosses the line rather than get personally involved.

Look at football’s Premier League and the greater noise of its army of online trolls. Football players seem to have a greater robustness/aloofness, ignoring the nonsense and just getting on with business. There’s a lesson in that for rugby and the way it is drawn into the commotion rather than steering well clear.

Meteoric-rising Cunningham-South

Ethan Roots was the rookie hoisted on a pedestal last weekend, the blindside's all-round debut game resulting in him pocketing the official player of the match reward. Thing is, his meteoric rise could be trumped in the long run by what fellow newcomer Chandler Cunningham-South has to offer the England back row.

It was October 2022 when Declan Kidney first suggested the world was Cunningham-South’s oyster. The English-born forward had moved to New Zealand aged four but a London Irish academy deal tempted him back to the land of his birth and he was soon fast-tracked into the first team.

“Chandler is an intelligent young man and is more than aware of how much growth there is left in him to get to where he could go. He is a cheery, jolly fella. He brings a good atmosphere to the changing room. He’s a good lad, good company.”

Kidney’s description was spot on, Cunningham-South being the perfect interviewee when RugbyPass sat down with him in Cape Town last June at the U20s World Cup. At the time, his switch to Harlequins had just been confirmed following the stressful few weeks after the collapse of the Exiles and his ambitions in the game were clear.

“If you are going to make the trip over (from New Zealand), it’s a 27-hour flight, I wasn’t coming to mess around or anything, I was coming to do something, to make a big change. I felt like it worked,” he said about his accelerated progress.

“I do have a lot to do in my game to get to where I want to be. I want to play international rugby, for sure, and I want to do well for my club as well and I want to win Premierships, I want to win European titles. That is sort of my goal. I just want to participate, to really achieve stuff in my career.”

There was no hint of arrogance. Asked to rate his pace, passing and tackling out of 100, he respectively answered: “I’ll be humble, I’ll say 68; That’s not bad, I’d say 74; 82.”

Eight months later, the 20-year-old’s numbers can easily be revised upwards following his energetic effort off last week's bench and his potential to be a round-two game-changer.

Just ask Sam Warburton who is already touting him to be the British and Irish Lions’ Test blindside next year.