England are ignoring outside pressure and talk of Saturday’s clash with South Africa being a pivotal match for the side, with head coach Steve Borthwick parking all of that and directing all his focus into ensuring his team convert good opportunities into points this weekend.
England head into Saturday’s match with five defeats in the last six Tests. That includes their last two losses at Twickenham — where they fell 24-22 to the All Blacks on Nov. 2 and then 42-37 to Australia last time out. Both matches were decided in the final moments of the game.
That has increased the pressure on Borthwick and his team to deliver this weekend, with Rassie Erasmus earlier on Thursday describing such a feeling as like having a “gun against your head.” But Borthwick has given scant thought to the outside noise around this match.
“For me, I am coaching a team in the very best manner we possibly can. Where we’re at, where we intend to take this team, is you have seen a transition in playing style over this last period,” he said.
“You’ve seen a transition in the players selected over this last period. I think the team has grown enormously through this year, with a load of younger players coming into this team.
“What we have failed to do is convert the positions into results, and my focus is on, one, making sure we keep getting ourselves into real good positions and, two, finishing them off. That’s where all my attention is.”
Borthwick has made four changes for Saturday’s match. Two are injury enforced with Tom Curry and Immanuel Feyi-Waboso dropping out after sustaining head injuries against Australia last weekend. Borthwick says both should be in the mix to face Japan next weekend. In their place, Sam Underhill starts at openside and Ollie Sleightholme — who scored twice against the Wallabies off the bench — gets his first start on the wing.
England have made two other changes with Jack van Poortvliet replacing Ben Spencer at scrum-half and Freddie Steward coming into the side for George Furbank at fullback. Both switches are with a view to tweaking their game plan for Saturday, perhaps playing a more pragmatic style of rugby, like they did against South Africa in their heartbreaking World Cup semifinal 16-15 loss last year.
And so it’s with those four changes they welcome the Boks to Twickenham on Saturday, looking to get that morale-boosting victory. Borthwick is unwavering in his belief England are on the right path.
“When you are coaching England, there are always things on the outside,” Borthwick said. “There always is. I stood up in front of the team at the start of this week, and said there are a couple of little things, the ball goes six inches the other way, so you catch a ball at the end of the game, and we would have seen two different results, and everyone is talking this team up as having a very, very good autumn.
“But we haven’t. The ball’s not gone our way, the language outside is a different language. So the reality always is get better today, and that’s always my intention as a coach, and my intention with the team.
“It is one of my strengths that I just focus and compartmentalise pretty well. My job is to coach this team, I love coaching this team, I am loyal to this group of players, and we’ve got to do things better than what we have. We are frustrated we haven’t got wins, we intend to get wins, and it’s a brilliant challenge for us this weekend.”
One of the subplots to this week’s match has been the curious case of Felix Jones. He was assistant coach for the Boks as they won both the 2019 and 2023 Rugby World Cups. He left the Boks to join Borthwick’s England regime at the start of this year but handed in his notice in August. Since then, he has been operating in a remote analyst role as he sees out his 12-month notice period.
Earlier in the week both senior coach Richard Wigglesworth and player Henry Slade said they hadn’t spoken to Jones this autumn, but Borthwick was full of praise for the role Jones has had in their preparation.
“So Felix as in all weeks is providing his incredibly detailed and thorough analysis of opposition and review of our performances, and elements of our training, I asked him to review.
“He has been in very close contact with us, with [defence coach] Joe El-Abd, with our analyst Joe Lewis, who he worked across with.
“The packages Felix is producing, as is typically Felix, is very, very thorough. One of the initial packages, it was so big to transfer electronically from Dublin, Felix had to fly over and give over the hard drive, there was that much material involved in this.
“So there’s lots of contact there. Felix at this point is already focussing upon Japan, and will then come back and debrief the game, review the game versus South Africa, and he is feeding in the information in that regard.”
