England have little chance of winning the World Cup in Australia in two years’ time unless they do one key thing – sort out their midfield. It’s as simple and as stark as that. Whichever way you box and cox it no team has flourished without a settled, top-end centre partnership. Carling and Guscott, Greenwood and Tindall (with a rather important input from Mike Catt along the way). What about those peerless Wallabies, Tim Horan and Jason Little? Kiwi muscle allied to Mensa IQ, Ma’a Nonu and Conrad Smith? Fast forward a few years and the current crop of high-achievers are an essential part of their country’s prowess – Damian de Allende and Jesse Kriel for the Springboks while in recent years a combo of Bundee Aki, Garry Ringrose and Robbie Henshaw has been the bedrock of Ireland’s midfield. Sione Tuipulotu and Huw Jones, anyone, or likewise, Italian aces, Tommaso Menoncello and Ignacio Brex?
You get the point. Get your centres in place and you’ve got base camp taken care of. Even getting one of the fixtures and fittings decided is a big step forward. Are Harlequins anything like the force that they once were – and Marcus Smith a laid-back productive operator at fly-half – now that Andre Esterhuizen is no longer leading the charge down that inside channel?
England, by contrast, have had to shuffle their deck of cards constantly since Steve Borthwick took over. Injury, of course, has forced his hand but if he doesn’t manage to find some stability pretty soon – and this November is the must-do starting point – then they will never acquire the attacking shape and fluency that the leading international teams are delivering as a matter of course these days. The Rugby Championship showed us that.
Borthwick has worked his way through a legion of players over the last two and a half years (three years in fast-approaching December), working his way through the likes of Ollie Lawrence, Henry Slade, Owen Farrell, Manu Tuilagi, Fraser Dingwal, Joe Marchant, Luke Northmore and on and on.
Of course you have to feel for Borthwick when it seemed that the tour to Argentina in the summer had given him a copper-bottomed option in Seb Atkinson only for the Gloucester man to be struck down with quad and MCL damage, a cruel blow for both player and country. Atkinson had given England edge and direction, a foil to those outside him.
Given the depth of resources available to Borthwick, there will not be too much sympathy to be found in other countries even though we might be empathise with his predicament. And that predicament revolves around Ollie Lawrence. The Bath centre has returned from injury and offers the prospect of filling a slot in the England midfield in much the manner that all those luminaries mentioned above did for their respective teams. Lawrence brings so much – pace, footwork, vision and defensive cleverness as well as presence.