The RFU will review the team’s performance in January after a disappointing calendar year saw them lose five matches in a row
Two years into the job as England’s head coach, Steve Borthwick has a 50 per cent win rate – played 28, won 14 – that is uninspiring in itself, and furthermore hides the lack of a single victory over South Africa, New Zealand, France, Scotland or Australia.
In 2024, the return is five wins from 12 matches – against Ireland, Italy, Wales and Japan twice – and in the Autumn Nations Series just completed, it was one win over Japan, and three agonisingly narrow losses to New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
So where does Borthwick stand with his employers at Twickenham?
What happens next?
Borthwick will conduct an internal debrief of the squad over the next two weeks, while analysing all the autumn games for trends, and in January the Rugby Football Union’s (RFU) customary review of performance after a competition or series will comprise a panel including Conor O’Shea – the RFU’s director of performance rugby since 2020 – and anonymous advisers.
Borthwick is understood to be among the RFU “leaders” and executives who will be forfeiting an undisclosed amount of their salary bonus that is linked to the goal of “Winning England” set out in the Union’s annual report.
i understands these bonuses are linked to match results in the financial year from 1 July, 2024 to 30 June, 2025 – so England’s five straight losses in the summer and autumn have already had an impact, no matter what the team do in the 2025 Six Nations in February and March.
Nevertheless, all the mood music points to the RFU giving Borthwick the Six Nations to prove the team are tracking upwards, and that seems fair. Home wins over France, Scotland and Italy in that competition must surely be the minimum target, to put England in the position of playing for the title when they finish in Wales on 15 March. The squad will resume training together two weeks before meeting Ireland in Dublin on 1 February
In the meantime, as the players say hello to their clubs again after six weeks away, Borthwick insists there will be benefits to their conditioning for Test rugby via the Professional Game Partnership, although this needs further explanation.
The overall picture this autumn
The decades-old maxim of “it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game” has fallen into disrepute.
The tyranny of the result these days is closer to “don’t tell me about that nice try you scored when you have just lost to New Zealand, Australia and South Africa” – even though it was essentially a series of friendly matches, with no points or trophies at stake.
The Australia result was the worst, at home to a recent basket-case of a team. The pain in the other two was, paradoxically, seeing England get themselves into a position to win, then fall short. The players must know the huge importance of knife-edged situations such as the last-minute scrum and drop-goal move that went wrong against New Zealand.
If they fail to see those win-or-bust moments through, is it the players who aren’t up to it – either psychologically, or physically, or skills-wise – or something missing from the coaches? Or, possibly… hey, it’s just sport, and the other team nicked it
England conceded 14 tries in the four autumn games, and 109 points at an average of 27.25 per match – too many to be a reliable foundation for wins.
The defence appeared riddled with confusion, with less commitment to and organisation of the “blitz” or “rush” – England’s term for it is “the hammer” – and maybe this was due to the change of defence coach from Felix Jones to Joe El-Abd, although it’s the players’ responsibility on the field.
In attack, Marcus Smith’s vision, foot speed, passing and short kicking make him the best fly-half, on many measures, but he is relatively tricky to read – you can see it, watching the interaction with his team-mates in matches, and it has also been mentioned by Smith’s Harlequin’s club coach Nick Evans, and England’s centres Henry Slade and Ollie Lawrence. The potential of Fin Smith as an alternative No 10 was seen against Japan – but it was only Japan. In the same match, the Twickenham crowd loved Tommy Freeman’s behind-the-back pass for George Furbank to score.
It would be great to see England produce those flourishes against all opposition, for their own fulfillment and enjoyment, as well as the public’s.
“We didn’t move the ball to space [this autumn] and that’s something we’ve looked at,” Freeman said on Sunday. “There were opportunities missed.”
What are the alternatives to Borthwick and his assistants?
The RFU’s succession planning for coaches is based on “Project Everest”, run by Nigel Redman, the Union’s team performance director since 2021, to identify and grade every candidate on the planet.
Obvious examples close to home, and English, are Mark Mapletoft, head coach of England’s world-champion Under-20s, and Phil Dowson and Sam Vesty at the Premiership champions, Northampton Saints.
The former Australia and Argentina coach Michael Cheika is sitting at Leicester Tigers with a strong CV, and a one-year-plus-one-year-option contract (and a one-week disciplinary ban from the RFU picked up in September), while the All Blacks’ boss Scott Robertson told i in 2022 he’d like to coach England after he is finished with New Zealand.
It must be assumed that, if results improve, the RFU’s ideal is for Borthwick to be in place until the 2027 World Cup, at least.
Some would like to see him more animated in matches, as seen with the likes of Cheika, Robertson and Rassie Erasmus, but that’s Borthwick’s character, and that’s who the RFU employed. One idea could be for Borthwick to be more open with information on his planning in between times, so the public can feel more involved in what England are trying to do. It is their team, after all.
And is there space for a bit more “grey hair” to help? The England assistant coaches Richard Wigglesworth, El-Abd (now back at his club Oyonnax until the Six Nations) and Kevin Sinfield all had extensive playing careers but are callow as Test coaches. Bringing in someone like Wayne Smith, Steve Hansen, Ian Foster or Nick Mallett from the “been there, done it” brigade risks undermining the authority of the incumbents. It’s all so nuanced, and there is so much in training we don’t see, but it could help make players more confident and able to take ownership of performance. Other questions such as lifting the ban on players based at French clubs will keep on being debated.
