Steve Borthwick reveals how Ben Youngs reacted to his England axe
England boss Steve Borthwick has finally addressed his midweek decision to scratch men’s record caps holder Ben Youngs from the squad for this Sunday’s Guinness Six Nations match at home to Italy. The 33-year-old, who made his first Test appearance in 2010, has been a selection mainstay ever since then and he earned his 122nd cap off the Twickenham bench last Saturday versus Scotland.
However, Borthwick took the decision this week to promote Alex Mitchell to the replacements and release Youngs from the squad when it was cut from 36 to 29 in midweek. No explanation was forthcoming at the time of that announcement from the England head coach as he wasn’t scheduled for a media briefing until Friday’s late afternoon match day team naming.
After fielding a multitude of questions on the hot topic that was the demotion of Marcus Smith to the bench, Borthwick was asked to share his thoughts on why England had jettisoned Youngs and whether it potentially signals the beginning of the end of his stellar international career.
“Ben is a tremendous player and has a wealth of experience,” began Borthwick. “I know him having worked with him really closely for the last few seasons at club level also [Leicester].
“The way he trained this week was brilliant, the way he handled the news around selection is testament to his character. He was just a model of putting the team first. Look at the quality of the nines. We have got two young nines in the squad this week who I think are the right nines for this game [the starting Jack van Poortvliet with Mitchell as cover].
“I have said this consistently, we want to have competition for places in this English team. It is the way it should be and if we get competition for places you will then have players, high-quality players, that aren’t selected. My job is to pick the right blend of players for the game we are playing, the type of game we are playing, the opposition we are playing which is what I have done this week and that means there are good players who aren’t selected.
“What I look at is how they respond and to a man, I would say every one of the players this week has trained brilliantly.”
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Dont know if the Irish players said it or not, but lets all be honest with ourselves, and hopefully both the Irish and French have healed by now, the Media did jump the gun, be realistic, according to 90% of the media it was a France and Ireland final, and the media had 1 of them winning the world cup, not even mentioning the All blacks? Just remember world cups are different, Australia was not the most in form cricket tean in the last cricket world cup, but they have a nack of winning when it matters. I wont go into whether what Etzabeth is saying is true, all I am saying is that its very easy for a team to get ahead of themselves due to the media. Nothing wrong with it, the media got the springboks over confident against England and we nearly lost that one.
Go to commentsHey Finn, Well done to the Junior Wallabies…a win is a win but it was a wet and scrappy game. Would be interesting to hear your opinion on two things from watching the game at the Not So Sunny Coast Stadium. Firstly, what is your opinion on the rule change of being able to call The Mark from a kick off and what is the reason for the change? Secondly, your thoughts on the lack of action for the high tackle on the SA fullback. I understand the TMO ruled that he had fallen into the tackle and the tackler didn’t have time to adjust but it was clearly shoulder on head and the Aussie 11 had not made any attempt to adjust his tackle height leading into the tackle. In my opinion he was never going to get his tackle technique correct to complete a safe tackle. If that tackle was made at a more senior and more scrutinised level would we have seen the same result?
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