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On Sunday evening, standing in the rain outside Ashton Gate, Bordeaux coach Noel McNamara stopped to field a couple of questions about the Six Nations. An Irishman living in France, he tipped England as the team to watch over the coming weeks.
Speak to figures in the Scottish, Welsh and Italian camps and they are all singing a similar tune. Fabien Galthie’s decision to drop Gregory Alldritt, Gael Fickou and Damian Penaud moved the needle and suddenly England are the team to beat.
Unlike Galthie, Borthwick sprung no surprises when he announced his 36-man squad at Twickenham on Friday. England enjoyed 11 consecutive victories last year and they now have their best chance of winning the Six Nations since 2020.
Their prop stocks have been hit by the absence of Fin Baxter, Will Stuart and Asher Opoku-Fordjour but every nation is facing injuries of some sort. Their core remains intact and they are hoping to pick up where they left off.
Test rookies Manny Iyogun and Billy Sela have been included as Borthwick showered praise on the pathway system. Sela, 20, started for Bath in Toulon in the Champions Cup. The form of England’s clubs in Europe has been impressive and their confidence should transfer over to the national team’s camp in Girona next week.
There is a consensus that Ireland have an ageing squad. Welsh rugby is in turmoil while Scotland and Italy have never had the consistency of title contenders. England are the team in form and their final-round Test in Paris should be the hottest ticket in town.
Steve Borthwick speaks to the media at England's Six Nations squad announcement on Friday
Tommy Freeman is one of many enormously talented players in Borthwick's squad. The England head coach says the winger is 'very much moving to centre'
Test rookie Billy Sela, of Bath, has made the Six Nations squad. The 20-year-old heads into the championship full of confidence after impressing with his in-form club
‘On March 14 in Paris, entering that game, we want to be in a position where we can achieve what we're all aiming to achieve,’ said Borthwick, who discussed title ambitions with his players when they met for a mini-camp two weeks ago.
‘We want England fans flooding across the Channel to Paris to come and watch the team in a massive encounter in the final round with the opportunity to achieve what we want. We also know that the only way you get there is by ensuring each of you take each step one at a time and get our preparation right for the start of the tournament.
‘It’s brilliant that people are talking in that way about this England team. They can see the development of the team and they can see the talent that's in the team and they can see the potential that's in it. I think we're nowhere near maxing out the potential.’
When Borthwick sat down to discuss his selections in the Twickenham changing room on Friday morning, the first thing he did was resurrect a joke from the autumn about a journalist’s neon running trainers.
He is ready to pick up where he left off – but familiar debates remain around England’s midfield. When asked about Tommy Freeman, he said the winger is ‘very much moving now into the centre’. You suspect Borthwick’s first-choice backline to face Wales will be as follows: Alex Mitchell, George Ford, Immanuel Feyi-Waboso, Fraser Dingwall, Freeman, Tom Roebuck, Freddie Steward.
Roebuck will travel to Girona on a rehabilitation list and if he does not recover then the balance of the attack could shift. The names of Elliot Daly, Cadan Murley, Max Ojomoh, Seb Atkinson, Marcus Smith and Henry Slade will not be far from the conversations.
‘There’s been a lot of consistency in terms of selection over the last 12 months,’ said Borthwick. ‘We had a period where we didn’t have specialist 12s and ball-playing 12s who have that skillset, but now we’re blessed in that we have effectively three of them.
‘You can see the nature of the game in the PREM has changed. There was a period where we didn’t really have many sevens around the PREM, and then the nature of the game changed a little bit, and the role and the value of the seven got prioritised, and now you see just how many sevens we have.
England will use the experience gained from their 11-game winning streak, including a victory over the All Blacks, in a showdown with France on March 14
Damian Penaud is one of the star names to have been omitted from France's squad, boosting England hopes
Borthwick will be without some of his prop options in the Six Nations - but what country is ever injury-free?
‘You’re also seeing the ball movement that’s happening in the PREM, so having centres that have that ability to see space and move the ball to space has been valued much more than it was previously. The way the Premiership has altered has certainly meant we’ve got more ball players coming through.’
Following the autumn campaign, Borthwick took his coaches to spend a day with the Red Arrows pilots at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. They observed their coordination and communication as England work out how to continue their winning form.
'The lead pilot talked us through the selection procedure of Red Arrows pilots and he basically said every one of these pilots is a great pilot,’ said Borthwick. ‘But what we're going to select on is going to be the character of these people. I thought, "How great that is and how consistent that is with what we do".
‘We want tremendous characters in our team and I feel right now we have that and hard workers as people who are diligent and who want to get better. We have players in there with huge amounts of talent, and while we’re still reasonably low on experience at Test level, as they get used to Test rugby their growth is going to be enormous.’
With Fin Smith still recovering from a calf injury, George Ford is likely to take charge of proceedings from the beginning. England are hoping to time their run to peak at next year’s World Cup in Australia. A daunting trip to South Africa this summer will be the ultimate test of England’s credentials but, for now, the Six Nations is well within their sights.
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