George Ford gets the England nod ahead of Fin Smith for Wallabies

This feels like the most conservative 15 Borthwick could have picked from that training squad. I don't see why you'd put Ford between Dingwall and Mitchell, Freeman. Either you pick Fin Smith and take the whole Saints 9 to 13 or you pick Ford and a better 12 than Dingwall - Slade/Ojomoh/Lawrence. Dingwall is a good prem player and arguably offers cohesion with Fin Smith at 10 but without Fin he shouldn't be there. He's a Steady Eddy. That ain't good enough at international level. No team is going into a game worrying about Dingwall on either side of the ball.

People forget Ford's dire performance last autumn with lack of tackling and awful kicking leading to defeats. Ford does not tackle and should be no part of England.

Sadly, this looks like a warm up game rather than the real team.

I expect the front rows and finishing back row will swap next week and you’ll see a totally different back line for the key games.

Furthermore.

This dithering by borethwick with the 3 no 10,s , you are in , you are out is one very good reason Willis said no thank you and left for france .

Very poor man management .

Ford is already slow and will be even slower in 2 years.

Put the two Smiths in and give them game time .

Well .

Fl . Ford gets maligned for a reason . He is vastly overated and the public can see it .

Did you see the 65 point mauling and his utterly disgraceful attempts at tackling Sarries .

The week after Marcus played brilliantly against them .

I am afraid borethwicks disingenuous talk AGAIN that rugby needs to play exciting rugby with star players in the team .

He then sends Marcus home. One of the prems star players.

Well ford is in and we all want him to at least try harder than he does for sale .

Marcus will be back

His performances will prove that .

I like the bench, not many teams are going to fancy the power of that front row, the pace of Pollock and the engine of Curry towards the latter stages.

Surprised though that neither Lawrence or CCS aren’t involved. We don’t have a lot of direct carriers in the starting team. That is what cost us the game v Ireland earlier this year.

Not sure how I feel about it, but it does feel like Borthwick is widening his player pool, and also giving rest to players. Especially as the six nations is being played over less weekends. Hopefully he has got it right.

wow

Its very different to the one I would have picked, but there’s a lot to like about this team.

As much as I wouldn’t have selected Ford, it is good that the most unfairly maligned player in world rugby is finally getting the respect he deserved for so long.

Its very interesting that Freeman’s selection comes at the cost of getting Lawrence in the team. Seems an odd call, but it is good that the Lawrence-at-12 experiment has finally run its course.

Nothing against ford but just doesn't seem the correct decision, you've got a younger fly half in fin smith who's just as good, arguably a higher ceiling and better defensively, surely you go with him now building to the WC?

Regardless though feels like England need to settle on a 10. But for my money you'd go with fin smith, especially given his age and connection with the other saints