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The Steve Borthwick verdict on his first three England matches
By Liam Heagney
England boss Steve Borthwick has given his verdict on his first month of matches in charge of a team he claimed wasn’t good at anything when he took over. It was after the opening-round loss to Scotland that the new head coach shed his diplomatic mask about the English XV he had inherited from Eddie Jones.
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The Australian was dismissed in December following just five wins in 12 matches in 2022, but Borthwick kept his powder dry on taking over and didn’t say much if anything about the shortcomings of the team he inherited from Jones, the boss he has assisted at both Japan and England until 2020 when he broke away to revive the ailing Leicester Tigers.
Borthwick admitted after the defeat to Scotland in his first match in charge: “There’s a lot of work to do. When I looked at the team in the autumn, when I measured the team and got all the data for the team, we weren’t good at anything.”
Those comments were made on February 4 not long after the 23-29 home defeat to Scotland. Since then, England have responded with a 31-14 Twickenham success over Italy followed by last Saturday’s 20-10 away win versus Wales that has left them third on the table, five points behind leaders Ireland ahead of the March 11 round four home match with France.
Asked for his assessment of his first month of matches in charge of England and whether he had witnessed improvements since losing to Scotland, Borthwick said: “I have discussed a number of times about getting brilliant basics because the team needs to have strong basics and any team wants to compete and build needs that.
“Do I think we have made improvement in that regard? You can see there is improvement in that regard. We have talked about that fight to the players and you see now where the players have faced some adversity in games, faced situations in games where they have been down on the scoreboard, been under pressure and the players have fought through that really, really well. There has been growth in that area as well.
“We know we are rebuilding a team and we know we have got a lot of work to rebuild the team but you are starting to see some foundations in places. I said it would be a pretty basic plan and that is what it is, we are just trying to get the foundations right because if you can get strong foundations then you can grow and build on them.”
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Borthwick’s latest gambit on putting sound foundations in place was omitting Marcus Smith from this week’s training squad of 26 to enable him to get some game time this weekend with Harlequins. This decision was the major talking at the coach’s media briefing on Tuesday after his squad was publicly named, but he assured that Smith would be included in the England squad that will assemble on Sunday evening to commence match week preparations to face a France team he has been impressed by.
“Clearly, a brilliant team having dominated the championship last year,” he said. “They have got the base of a big, strong forward pack that plays very much on the front foot with a brilliant nine and pace out wide build on a game where they try and dominate territory.
“They are the team that kicks longest in world rugby, they try and pin you back as far as they possibly can and then they try and force the opposition to give them the ball in the opposition half and then their great attack comes to life. They pose some really big physical questions, really big tactical questions as well.”
