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No title, no trophy, but the morning after the night before was a bright one for Steve Borthwick. An absence of silverware but glistening silver linings all over the place. The most ruthless, complete performance of Borthwick’s tenure puts the exclamation mark on England’s best Six Nations campaign for five years and gives reason for a genuine sense of optimism that his side have come of age.
It was only a few weeks ago that England were being booed by the Twickenham crowd, but such dissent feels a world away now and perhaps no one epitomises the feelgood factor more than Henry Pollock. Brought on for his debut after 48 minutes, his first involvement was to pack down for a scrum. After a word of encouragement from Ellis Genge, there Pollock was, grinning from ear to ear, backslapping teammates, high-fiving, bringing smiles to the faces of both Curry brothers.
In his eye-catching cameo Pollock scored two tries, milked a penalty by pulling on Gareth Thomas’s sock – the Wales replacement prop’s frustration getting the better of him – and showed up well in defence.
Maro Itoje described him after the match as a pest – it was meant entirely as a compliment – and teammates, particularly those who know him well from Northampton, speak repeatedly of his energy. Tommy Freeman said later: “He’s a joke, he’s unbelievable. I remember my first game I was shaking in the corner, all nervous. But this guy, nothing fazes him. [The night before the game] he was in my room telling me about how he was going to get his first try on the wing – and then he gets it. He was doing the try celebrations as well in the room, showing me what he was going to do. But that’s the type of guy he is and fair play to him, he backs it up and he’s got a big career ahead of him.”
After such an eye-catching debut Pollock is likely to make his first start on the summer tour of Argentina and the US, not least because some of his back-row colleagues will surely be away with the British & Irish Lions. The Pollock hype train hit top speed a while ago and Borthwick has evidently decided there is no point in trying to slow it down.
Indeed, the 20-year-old tyro has a rare quality but as Borthwick said: “I’m really hopeful with the next group [that quality] is not rare. I’ve spoken before about the shirt feeling heavy. Where players put the shirt on and go ‘Let’s not make a mistake, don’t do anything wrong’. I don’t think he is conscious of that. He just comes on and wants to win, Ccomes on and wants the ball. And if there’s something I could change and develop with this team through this whole next generation, it’s for them to be energised by the shirt, bring you all their personality, bring all their skill, and [Henry] did that.”
There is the need to temper the obvious optimism that comes with a record win in Cardiff and a healthy return of four wins from five by acknowledging just how poor Wales were, just how insipid they had become in the second half. Equally, there was huge fortune to the one-point win over France and plenty of it against Scotland.
That said, Borthwick will look forward to a development tour in the summer before reconvening with what he hopes will be a raft of victorious Lions in the autumn. Fin Smith’s emergence as the starting fly-half ranks highly on the list of success stories this championship, so too Ben Curry’s performances to further bolster Borthwick’s already-well-stocked back-row options.
Freeman has enjoyed a fine tournament and took to playing at centre seamlessly while Borthwick revealed afterwards that he is considering starting Ben Earl in midfield in the not-too-distant future. Overall, there is a feeling of a team coming together now. That barring one or two positions in which England lack a bit of depth, the exodus of so many players to France is no longer causing a headache.
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“The sense I get from them is they just really enjoy playing rugby,” Borthwick said. “They really enjoy playing for England, and they don’t think about other stuff too much. They don’t complicate [things], just try and keep it simple, which is a real joy for me as the coach. There’s probably a patch of about 15 minutes in the Ireland second half where we’d go: ‘We wish we could rewrite that.’ But I’ve said that we can’t. We have to learn as much as we can and step forward.”
Lions tours can be disruptive for national head coaches in the sense that players inevitably experience lulls afterwards, such is their workload. Borthwick, however, is unequivocal that he wants as many England players on this year’s tour of Australia as possible, the longer-term benefits outweighing any disruption, for the tour will mark the halfway point in the World Cup cycle and England have just come into bloom.
