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WHEN Steve Borthwick picked his 33man England squad for the 2023 World Cup this week there were 17 players included from the 2019 squad which reached the final – and none of them are better players now than they were four years ago.
Most have declined significantly in form and consistency, and there are precious few who are even level-pegging. The reality, whether it is a consequence of Premiership ring-fencing drastically lowering elite competitive standards, or Eddie Jones making a complete botch of rebuilding the team after their dusting in the Yokohamaa final – or both – is that England have plummeted as an internationalal force since they reluctantly accepted their silver medals.
Head coach Borthwick, who was Jones' assistant at the time, knows all about the sense of frustration at an opportunity lost. He also knows about the failure of England's key players to respond in the aftermath.
There has been very little that the team's leading lights, like centurion halfbacks Owen Farrell and Ben Youngs, have managed to do to arrest the slide. Others in the Saracens cohort, such as Billy and Mako Vunipola, Maro Itoje, Jamie George,e, and Elliot Daly, have also experienced marked dips in form at Test level since their club's salary cap scandal.
Yet, Borthwick still continues to pick them – including doing an about-face by pinning his hopes on Billy Vunipola to pull England back up to international rugby's summit. Having cut Vunipola for the entire Six Nations he has rewarded the No.8's determination to overcome injury and become “the fittest I've ever seen him” by including him in the World Cup squad.
This rehabilitation coincided with a public apology from Big Billy for raging at Borthwick during the 2019 tournament — after which the now head coach praised his contrition “as a sign of his character”.
England definitely need any uplift they can get, however contrived, because wherever else you look the trajectory has been downhill. This remains true at the scrum, where, despite the old adage “no scrum, no chance” being rammed home by South Africa in the 2019 World Cup final, Borthwick appears unable to make progress.
Among the England front row forwards reselected is Joe Marler. He has pushed on at club level, but the experienced loosehead's on-off Test retirement and Stoop celebrity status have interfered with him becoming a dominant international prop.
His tighthead counterpart, Dan Cole, has made a good fist of re- building after South Africa's Tendai Mtawarira used his “titanium left arm” to consistently get the jump on him in the decisive World Cup final scrum battle, but at 36 he is far from failsafe.
This was clear when Cole was under pressure from Sale loosehead Simon McIntyre during Leicester's Premiership semi-final loss at the AJ Bell. It is worth noting that the seasoned McIntyre did not make the World Cup training squad, although Bevan Rodd, his 22-year-old Sale understudy, is France-bound.
In the meantime, Bristol props Kyle Sinckler and Ellis Genge appear to have been issued with selection gold cards that guarantee them places in the starting XV.
Even though they were both overwhelmed last autumn against New Zealand and South Africa, and then proceeded to have lacklustre seasons for their club, they were nailed-on Six Nations starters. That has carried over into World Cup squad selection with Gloucester's consistently impressive Val Rapava Ruskin jettisoned, and Sale's solid tighthead Nick Schonert not considered, nor Harlequins tighthead Will Collier.
This list of front row blemishes raises big concerns over Borthwick's selection calls, while statistics about England's Six Nations scrum success should be handled with care. The front row protected its own put-in better than when they were bottom of the scrum rankings after being schooled by South Africa and New Zealand, but in the Six Nations the England platform wobbled against the Scots, was manhandled at times by the French, and was a holding operation against Ireland.
The failure five months later to gain any ascendancy over a second-string Welsh scrum which put Sinckler, Genge, and Rodd on the back foot in the second half in Cardiff, showed that the England scrum is still no better than shaky. At first this reinforced the argument to bring back Billy Vunipola as a breezeblock at the base, but this was replaced by incredulity when Borthwick accompanied it by axing Alex Dombrandt, leaving Billy as the only regular No.8 in the squad.
On past injury evidence a human tank like Vunipola takes at least a month to get up to speed – and, at 30, he may not be the force of old. Saracens won the Premiership title during his latest absence with veteran Jackson Wray at No.8 rather than Ben Earl, the openside flanker who Borthwick has earmarked as cover for Vunipola alongside another openside, Tom Curry.
The head coach has done it despite the Jones No.8 experiment with Curry that showed, despite his grit, that at Test level he did not have the specialist skills or size required. Earl is unlikely to be any different, and likewise Lewis Ludlam and Jack Willis.
Employing makeshift No.8s when you have a scrum which often gets its rollers stuck in reverse is a recipe for disaster. Why have the luxury of four flankers, as well as two locks who can play blindside in Courtney Lawes and George Martin, while only picking a single player in a key position along the spine of the team?
The coordination required between the No.8 and scrum-half to get the ball away with precision and speed is an art in itself, which is why you would expect Borthwick to value a team-building shortcut such as the four-year Harlequins combination of Dombrandt and Danny Care.
Dombrandt's day-to-day training absence hampers his chances of synchronising with the other scrumhalves, Youngs and Jack van Poortvliet, even though he may only be a cross-Channel flight away.
It hampers the telepathy that only comes from practising and playing together regularly. Those coaches who make the mistake of thinking a smooth 8-9 transition can be cobbled together in a couple of sessions, or by using occasional No.8s, will usually reap the whirlwind.
