Steve Borthwick has said he considers England’s triple fly-half threat of Owen Farrell, Marcus Smith and George Ford as an option for future use in their World Cup campaign, saying that having them all on the pitch together “brought another dimension” in the thumping 11-try win over Chile.
Smith shone on his first start at full-back, scoring two tries, while Farrell slotted seamlessly back in at fly-half as England clinched their third straight win at the tournament. Ford came on for the final half an hour, in which he teed up Henry Arundell for one of his five tries, as England cut loose against the lowest ranked team in France.
Borthwick had made 12 changes for this match and is likely to do similar for England’s next match against Samoa on 7 October but fielding Farrell, Smith and Ford together again is a possibility, according to the head coach.
“Marcus did a lot of very good things,” said Borthwick. “There was a lot of exciting talent on the pitch. This squad is packed full of talent and packed full of options and you saw that today. The starting configuration did a really good job after working through a challenging spell. To be able to change that during the game and have Owen, George and Marcus on the pitch brought another dimension and certainly gives options for the future.
“I think that playing at 15, there is a different amount of space there compared to playing at 10. The job of the players on the inside is to hold the defence to make sure there is space for the guys on the outside. I thought they did that very well. The way Marcus took those opportunities, found the space and linked with Henry in particular was a positive. I think what it shows is a lot of hard work from everybody on the training field.”
Arundell, meanwhile, equalled the record of most tries in a single game for England, becoming the first player since Josh Lewsey against Uruguay in 2003 to score five in a match and the fourth in history.
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Farrell, who scored 16 points on his first appearance in more than a month following his four-match suspension, moved to within one point of Jonny Wilkinson’s all-time record. Of Arundell’s feat, he said: “I think everybody knows what talent Henry’s got. He’s shown it before today. He’s shown it for London Irish, he showed it when he got his first touch in international rugby against Australia.
“A big thing that Henry showed today was that he got after everything in between. He didn’t just finish tries today. He got balls back in the air, he chased hard and worked hard for the team.
Ultimately, he got his rewards off the back of that. He does what he does unbelievably well.”
