England flies to Costa Brava next week but winter sun is only a small part of the package. While Steve Borthwick wants his players to take some time to relax away from Girona, his well-equipped training base currently top of La Liga, he also wants them to be well and ready to face the special demands of the modern Six Nations Championship.
Borthwick, as he likes to do, studies the stats and calculates that he knows where the championship will be won and lost before the ball is kicked. Spoiler alert: It won’t all be about backwards play or individual wizardry. According to England’s head coach, the key areas will be breaking and attacking, mirroring the knockout stages of the last World Cup.
Relating to: Steve Borthwick says English rugby has passed a turning point, but has it really?
England will not face their two strongest rivals, Ireland and France, until the last two rounds in March, but Borthwick will still prepare his squad for an immediate change of pace in his weekly Premiership diet. While the pace and standard of the domestic league has increased, Test rugby remains another game entirely.
One reason for this, according to Borthwick, is the way major tournaments are run. “Breakdowns and scrums are managed differently in international rugby. When you start looking at the Six Nations, there is no competition in world rugby that has a higher turnover rate in the rankings.
“With English referees in the Premiership, the speed of the ball is high and the players want the ball to come out without breaking. The area around Maul is also clean and has not been heavily penalised. In Test rugby it is different. That area is not that clean. There are a lot of good players in the Six Nations. “You see back rowers and that means the qualification is a real competition. Look at the Irish, French and Scottish back rows. They are very good quality.”
As South Africa highlighted in their World Cup semi-final, the attack remains a different beast to anything that exists domestically. “We realized to our detriment in the World Cup semi-final that scrum is a competition. It is important for teams to have the chance to attack for penalties. Not many scrum competitions can take place in the Premiership. I love scrum competition, I don’t want it to leave our game.”
It’s another reason why Borthwick can foresee a series of tight Six Nations games taking shape in close quarters, where defensive excellence is also important. “As you move up the levels, the defense standard also increases. Across international rugby fewer tackles are being missed and players are becoming fitter. And you can bring eight substitutes on the field, which means there will be less space in the second half. It’s getting harder and harder.”
Hence the reluctance of teams to play too much rugby in the middle third of the pitch and the importance of good kicking play. Entertainment may be subjective, but sports cannot tip the scales too far toward risk-free conservatism. Borthwick is among those who support reducing the number of benches allowed from the current eight.
“There needs to be a bigger discussion about the nature of play. But what we see now is less space. In order to create more, we need to have a certain level of fatigue in what we do. There are different areas you can tweak, but one of them is the number of replacements. “That will affect the amount of fatigue in the game and create some space.”
But for now, England needs players with good ball control and a high work rate. Sam Underhill and Ben Earl fit that description, as does returning reserve hooker Luke Cowan-Dickie, who missed the World Cup through injury. A complementary center pairing will also be important. If it is decided that Ollie Lawrence will not be deployed in the 12, Northampton’s uncapped Fraser Dingwall could enter the equation and be called upon to show that his Premiership form can be translated to the Test arena.
Either way, Borthwick is cautiously optimistic that the 10-team Premiership is now producing more tense, competitive competitions that can help prepare players for the top level. “There’s no doubt the concentration of talent has increased in some teams. I think the standard has improved, although we wouldn’t want it that way. It’s led to a more competitive Premiership and that’s good for our game.
“The closeness of the games is important. If we’re playing games where Test rugby is too tight and the scorelines are too high, that doesn’t prepare the players for what we need to do. Teams have to find ways to win those tough games. That brings a mental intensity that’s not always there. Six Nations’ “We all know that the mental intensity required is incredible.”
England’s move to Spain on Tuesday will be for business rather than pleasure.