The first time Steve Borthwick did not select Freddie Steward, he saw the face of a winner.
Borthwick immediately regretted not picking Steward for his first-ever match in charge of Leicester. It was an error he immediately remedied.
England boss Borthwick has hardly ever had to omit Steward since that 2020 debut, so impressive and consistent has the full-back's form proved.
Steward sat out England’s 30-24 World Cup quarter-final victory over Fiji last weekend, but has been supplanted for Saturday’s last-four battle with South Africa.
Marcus Smith started at full-back instead against Fiji, but will miss the Paris semi-final with the Springboks after failing parts of the Head Injury Assessment process.
Smith took a heavy whack to the face, suffering a bloody nose and a fat lip against Fiji, passed his in-game head checks but could not complete elements of the protocol this week.
Steward returns at No15 on Saturday primed to deliver all his aerial dominance just when England will need it most.
The Leicester full-back ranks among the world’s most imperious Test stars under a high ball, and England will lean on all that expertise at the Stade de France.
“My first game coaching Leicester, I was going through the selection process and was considering this young man Freddie Steward, I’d known from England Under-20s, but he was new to the squad, having just come out of the academy,” said Borthwick.
“The first game, I was deciding whether to pick him at 15, and I didn’t pick him, and I reflected after the match on that selection process, and I thought that he was ready.
“I watched his face when I told him he wasn’t picked for that game, in 2020, and I thought ‘this guy wants it, this guy is ready for it, it doesn’t matter how old he is’.
“So, the next week, I put him in. And from that point on he has just been brilliant.
“Everything you ask him to do, he just goes and does. Everything you ask him to go and get better at, he just goes and gets better at. That’s great credit to him as a professional.”
England captain Owen Farrell paid Steward the highest possible compliment by suggesting the full-back adopts the same kind of mindset as his own when preparing for the toughest challenges in Test rugby.
“Everybody knows how good Freddie is in the air and what a fantastic player he is in general for us,” said Farrell. “But it’s the want to do it, the want to be in those battles, the want to go and get the ball back for his team, the want to defuse what’s coming our way as well.
“He is one of the best in the world at it, and that attitude, that’s the way I would approach it if I was him as well.”
England may very well have opted to recall Steward for this clash in any case, but Smith being ruled out made the selection decision straightforward for Borthwick.
The England boss explained how Smith’s week had unfolded to the point where the Harlequins playmaker was unable to feature against South Africa.
“It was earlier in the week, he took a knock in the game, he passed the first part of the HIA process which allowed him to return in the game,” said Borthwick.
“Then the subsequent parts of that process, one part of that he did not pass, and it was confirmed to me he was unavailable for selection.
“He’s perfectly fine in terms of symptoms, he doesn’t feel anything and we expect him to be available for selection after this weekend. It’s important to stress at this point that player welfare is critical and vital to us.”
