Steve Borthwick has been liberal with the superlatives when describing the performances of some of the players in his England World Cup training squad.
He has called England's preparations “a level up” on his previous four World Cup involvements, and has heaped praise on the likes of Owen Farrell, Danny Care, Tom Pearson, Ellis Genge and Courtney Lawes.
This suggests an extraordinary transformation since the end of the Six Nations, because the head coach's comment after the tournament was that his players were not fit enough, and after their opening loss to Scotland he observed that England are “not good at anything”.
The fitness aspect was supported by Gregor Townsend's appraisal after his side's Calcutta Cup victory at Twickenham that they had more running in them than England in the decisive final quarter. There was plenty of evidence to back that up with England also falling away badly after the hour in the punishing losses against both France and Ireland.
Yet, even though England have not won any of the big prizes under Farrell's captaincy, Borthwick described him as a “fantastic leader”. At the same time he gave Care the accolade of being “an incredibly positive influence”, and “brilliant” over the three weeks of training. This begs the question why the veteran Harlequins scrum-half was not in his Six Nations squad.
There is nothing wrong with Borthwick trying to instil confidence in an England team which has gone through the wringer over the last three years.
One of the great coaches of the amateur era, the 1971 Lions mastermind Carwyn James, was known for talking to players and accentuating why they were outstanding – whether their super-skill was sidestepping, tackling, or brilliant timing of a pass – to boost their self-confidence.
James had a reputation for focusing on what they could do, rather than highlighting any flaws – and it usually worked a treat. However, the difference between Borthwick and James is that the Welshman kept it face to face.
There's another good reason for being circumspect about training camps: There is a list of coaches stretching from Land's End to John O'Groats who claimed their teams had trained the house down before they came a cropper at World Cups.
A squad being in peak condition is of great importance, and likewise being pitch perfect in drills and tactics – but being good in training does not automatically make a good team.
There have always been teams, and coaches, who train to their strengths rather than to rectify their weaknesses, and in their latest incarnation England have a number of glaring flaws. The most persistent is their failure to react and adapt when their plans are disrupted. This was evident against South Africa in their comprehensive defeat in the 2019 World Cup final, and it has been a recurring theme for most of the four years since then.
The second is that, like generations of England football teams, the hype surrounding many of Borthwick's squad is much greater than the ability they show at international level. England players are consistently awarded world-class status by some media platforms, despite lacking the consistency and match-winning attributes to merit the accolade.
The last area that has fizzled out and requires a complete reboot is the competitive edge and hunger that separates world champions from the rest.
At the root of the problem is the Premiership, and the corrosive effects of ring-fencing. If you look at the Premiership between 2000 and 2010, a period in which England won a World Cup, and came close to retaining it, a winning mentality was the lifeblood of the top English league.
Promotion-relegation throughout that period resulted in fierce contest at the top in which, despite a battle royal developing between Wasps and Leicester for supremacy, Sale also romped to a first-ever title, and Gloucester, Bath, Saracens and London Irish, all contested Premiership finals. Similarly, there were galvanising bottom of the table battles with big names like Harlequins, Northampton and Bristol relegated, and promoted again, while Worcester and Exeter also won promotion.
It was a truly competitive environment in which the stakes were high and errors could prove costly, but it honed English players to a sharp edge. It schooled them to take their chances ruthlessly, and to adapt on the hoof to retain an advantage. It bred a mindset of finding a way to win tight matches – including Jonny Wilkinson drop-goals.
Now, due to a protective ring-fence which has neutered the win-loss concept in the Premiership, we have seen very little of that hard-bitten hunger to win from England since their landmark World Cup semi-final victory over New Zealand four years ago.
In terms of peaking it is one of sport's classic examples of producing your best a week early. What has happened since then is a story of a deterioration so marked that the side which beat the All Blacks in Yokohama was in a different stratosphere to Borthwick's 2023 Six Nations team.
In some ways, the England U20 team mirrors the current senior side in lacking the fierce competitive edge to finish off their rivals.
There have been some encouraging signs from Mark Mapletoft's team during the World U20 Championship being played in South Africa. Among the most notable is the way the powerful young tight-head, Afolabi Fasogbon, made his mark. England's attacking scrummage platform had U20 Six Nations Grand Slammers Ireland on the rack, and it should have been the springboard for a side boasting plenty of talent to beat both the Irish and Australia.
Instead, despite scoring some impressive tries, they were too inaccurate and error prone to press home their advantage, and after giving the Irish and the Wallabies a foothold they were held to two pool draws (34- 34 and 22-22). It came within a whisker of costing them a place in the semi-finals – and meant that when they squeezed through they faced top seeds France, rather than the less formidable hosts, South Africa.
