FEATURE How England can ride the World Cup wave to Six Nations success

England head coach Steve Borthwick may not want to come home after the World Cup. Not because he doesn’t have family, or treasure his roots in Cumbria, or at Welford Road. But he may feel, with some justification, that it is no bad idea to play every England home game away from Twickenham.

The tournament in France at last allowed Borthwick some breathing space to pull the playing group together on his own terms, away from the West London spotlight. The booing at stadia in the land of England’s most bitter historical rival was not quite as loud as it had been at the old cabbage patch in the summer, nor as vociferous as it became for Eddie Jones before he was finally forced out at the very gloomy end of 2022.

There is a sizeable and influential body of opinion which will never accept Borthwick’s New Model Army, nor its commander-in-chief on the playing field, Owen Farrell. Farrell has won over 100 caps for his country and represented the British and Irish Lions on three consecutive tours, but somehow none of it will ever be good enough.

After his announcement as star du match in the wake of England’s 30-24 quarter-final win over Fiji, Farrell was roundly booed when he appeared on-screen, despite contributing 20 points to the victory. As England kicking coach Richard Wigglesworth observed after the game, “We are lucky to have him. As ever, the tallest trees catch the most wind, and he seems to catch a fair bit of it. [Owen] has proven [himself] time and time and time again, and I don’t understand why, in England, we feel the need to not celebrate that, not enjoy it, just because he is not sat in front of social media or media lapping all that up.

“He is incredibly serious about his career, he is an incredibly proud Englishman, he affects any team he is in, and he was brilliant for us, as we knew he would be. That was the maddening part of any noise – we knew what was coming.”

The most ironic part of the whole Farrell saga is that he is an integral part of a Saracens side which has revolutionised its approach since the 105-kick bore-fest against the Leicester Tigers in the 2021-22 Gallagher Premiership finale. The Welford Road side stayed largely the same, but Saracens moved their style forward dramatically in the following season.

In a league which proudly boasts the highest ball-in-play time of any top professional competition in the world (over 38 minutes per game), the club from North London:

• Scored the most points in the league (695), and were runners-up in tries scored (87), just behind the Northampton Saints.
• Ran for more metres-per-game than anyone bar Northampton, while making the most line-breaks (7).
• Cut back their kicking metres to 827m per game – seventh in the league, 330m per game less than Leicester.

Owen Farrell’s Saracens were riding the zeitgeist of the English Premiership, which is determined to provide a spectacle with more substantial attacking content than ever before. With the likes of Worcester Warriors, Wasps, London Irish and the Jersey Reds all folding their professional tents before the end of the 2022-23 season, the urgency of that movement will only intensify. An over-inflated ‘wild west’ wage structure, lower attendances at the gate and a flatlining TV broadcast deal will see to that. The product in the shop window needs to be seen to be providing top value for the punter’s dollar.

Farrell has shown he can be a smooth cog in a club machine with wider attacking ambitions.

And this is exactly where the fates of Owen Farrell and Steve Borthwick will need to converge, or move forever apart with ‘Twickenham man’ poised to make his displeasure felt. Saracens have shown that they can transform their playing personality as a club, and Farrell has shown he can be a smooth cog in a club machine with wider attacking ambitions – ably supported by a cast of playmaking lieutenants including Alex Lozowski, Elliot Daly and Alex Goode. Can Borthwick now perform the same magic trick at national level?

Veteran England wing Jonny May summed up the issue nicely:

“We’re starting to see what a genius Steve is, in terms of how he’s starting to get this team going.

“You won’t find a harder working man than Steve and his approach to the game is a little bit like [World War II code-breaker] Alan Turing.

“If anybody is going to crack the code to rugby it will be Steve – and good luck to him. He’s getting ever closer each week. He’s got an analytical brain and evidence-based, scientific, Spock-like approach to the game.

“Within his ways, he’s on to something. He’s a young coach, and he’s unique – it’s different the way he goes about the game. He’s obsessed with it.”

Steve Borthwick eventually produced a game-plan which came closer than any other team in the knockout stages to toppling the defending world champions – but can he build a team which will make regular visitors to Twickenham feel that the £200 they spend on a blue-riband ticket, or the £1,000 plus they fork out on a hospitality package truly delivers a bang for their buck?

‘Within his ways, he’s on to something’, but the Six Nations is a very different beast to the World Cup, and there will be far more of a demand to not just win, but win with style. The Cavalier will want to have his say, even amid a sea of Roundheads, with a roundhead vision of how games of elite rugby are won. There will need to be a few flourishes, and rather more than a smattering of flamboyant, full-blooded cavalry charges with rugby’s equivalent of Prince Rupert at their head, and his hunting poodle ‘Boy’ at his side.

England’s try-scoring range and capacity will need to improve radically, and there may be some uncomfortable selection choices to be made in the process. At the World Cup, England had the lowest average ruck speed in the entire tournament (4.72 seconds per ruck) and the lowest ratio of lightning-quick ball of any of the nations in the last eight bar Wales (33 per cent). At the same time, they kicked the most (36 times per game, six more than anyone else in the competition).

How can you develop speed in your attacks, quickness of movement and realignment, and a higher density of LQB repetitions when you are always kicking the ball away?

Let’s take a look at some of the obstacles lying in the way of a broader English attacking game in the 2024 Six Nations. The bulk of these examples – taken from the fascinating pool game versus Samoa – occur in situations where the men in white are looking to pass off the dominant hand, from right to left:

It is the same two-phase move from lineout, 20 minutes apart. In both cases, Manu Tuilagi makes good yardage on first phase from lineout and sets up LQB for England No 9 Alex Mitchell. So far, so good – but second phase comes to grief and ends in turnover.

England are attempting to utilise hooker Jamie George to connect a vertical line of attackers – fullback Freddie Steward at the top of the play, with No 10 George Ford and No 8 Ben Earl directly behind him. In the first clip, Steward overruns the play and gives the Samoan defender an easy read on the ball in behind, in the second the ball is intended for the fullback himself but the intent is again too transparent. One busted play may be regarded as a misfortune, but two looks like carelessness.

The errant link between forwards and backs was a constant thorn in England’s side throughout:

Both clips come from within the same attacking sequence early in the second half. England have good depth of alignment out to the left but the forwards hit the line too early to be convincing decoys, and there is too much space between the two lines of attack. Steward then compounds the issue by hurling a long, looping pass which only brings the Samoan defenders on to the ball with added momentum.

In the second instance, the middle man of the forward pod (Maro Itoje) is passing off the back foot and is therefore no threat to run, which has precisely the same effect as before: the entire blue defensive line heaves forward on to the men outside Maro, with the ultimate negative outcome – a breakaway interception.

If the first sequence is another example of that yawning gap developing between forwards and backs in the two lines of attack, creating impetus for Samoa rather than England, there is also an object lesson in the misuse of space. There is no reason for Jonny May in particular, to come to a confused halt in the middle of the field with another three backs outside him, and Marcus Smith making up ground fast from the back-side of the play.

It was the appearance of the Quins’ man off the bench which helped right some of the wrongs in England’s best move of the match:

On this occasion, replacement prop Kyle Sinckler is only passing the ball right in the teeth of the D, with Smith in close attendance behind him. The spatial relationship is right, and it produces an immediate dividend further out. Only a forward pass from Itoje to Joe Marchant on review denied England a well-worked try.

He may not like it as much as he enjoys donning a tracksuit or studying stats late into the still of night, but Steve Borthwick has a public relations role to fulfil as the head coach of England. He not only has to produce a successful side, he has to create one whose style the Twickenham faithful will feel able to support. A family of top-drawer £200 tickets will not leave so much in the budget for the pre-game hamper, so spectacle on the field will be at a premium.

As a club, Premiership champions Saracens have kicked on, and managed the transition from power-based grapplers to sinuous attackers, but Borthwick’s alma mater at Welford Road, the Leicester Tigers have not. The club game is under pressure as never before to generate entertainment, and value for money, and that will translate upwards to the national team.

However close Borthwick may feel he is to cracking rugby’s secret code, somehow his Enigma machine will need to hone the attacking talents of Marcus Smith, Ollie Lawrence, Henry Arundell and Freddie Steward for the solution to be accepted. Young Henry probably receives more passes in one training session with Racing 92 than he does in an entire season with England, and that will not do at all. Raise your swords and charge – or that heroic semi-final loss to South Africa will be washed away all too quickly from the collective West London rugby memory.