No bouncy castles, no paddleboarding and, mercifully, not a judo mat in sight. As yet no reports of Steve Borthwick throwing anybody a packet of sweets, handing out a crate of beer or promising a prime cut of beef then sending sausages because “you’re not ready for steak yet”. Indeed, searching England’s Bagshot hotel for tangible signs the Borthwick era is up and running was proving a thankless task until the penny dropped: it was their very absence that revealed so much more.
This week England were due to be at a warm-weather training camp in Portugal. In the last year they have been to Brighton and Jersey, even Thorpe Park, performing numerous exercises designed to build social capital. This is not to belittle Eddie Jones’s methods – history shows that they were incredibly popular and mightily effective in his first few years as head coach – but it will come as little surprise to hear that it is not Borthwick’s style.
Trips abroad have been cancelled and while there was a one-off open training session at Twickenham on Tuesday, the rest of this week’s training camp in Bagshot, away from the pitch, has been stripped back. The hotel too – for it is undergoing significant renovations – but regardless, Borthwick evidently wants to get down to business at England’s familiar base, where Jamie George returned on Wednesday to continue his concussion return-to-play protocols.
Training days have been tweaked and have more of a “club” feel, and the word from the camp is that hard graft has been the order of the day. Borthwick is not without his idiosyncrasies – when he arrived at Leicester it was a priority to remodel the gym and training base – but the early messages from the England squad are that, with the clock ticking before next Saturday’s Calcutta Cup, he is drilling players with detail on the field and keeping things simple off it.
There are no more morning and afternoon sessions – the equivalent of a dreaded split shift for anyone who has pulled pints for a living. Instead, the players get through their body of work then have their down time. You sense Borthwick may need to be a little more creative with off-field entertainment when England spend up to two months in northern France later this year but for now, his no-frills approach seems to be going down well.
“The main difference is how we’re talking about the way we want to play,” said Lewis Ludlam. “We’re getting a real clarity on the way England want to play and the emotional connection as well.” There’s the C-word again – Borthwick is determined to rid England of the muddled thinking that blighted the final stage of Jones’s tenure.
The idea of a club culture is interesting, too, because during the autumn Jones and a number of his players were lining up to tell us how difficult it can be for the squad to assemble from so many different sides and flick the England switch. Recent campaigns have been marred by early defeats as a result and Borthwick is aware of the significance of beating Scotland – not least because his two predecessors managed it in their first matches in charge and bought considerable goodwill.
“We have two weeks’ [preparation] until Scotland and are going to have to be in the best physical and mental condition possible,” added Ludlam. “We need to learn our lessons quickly. It’s been detailed and, as players, we need to be sponges.”
It is instructive to hear that much of that detail has focused on the driving maul – when he was the forwards coach, Borthwick was never far from the step-ladder, perfecting lineout drills, and clearly he sees it as a weapon in need of sharpening. “If we can get an edge there and score three or four more of those opportunities when we are five metres out, that goes a long way in world rugby,” said Ludlam. “The exciting thing with Steve is that everything is thought through in terms of how we are going to play, where we are going to score our points. It’s important we put our eggs in those baskets.”
If there has been a lot for the players to digest, it helps that Borthwick and his right-hand man, Kevin Sinfield, are approachable coaches. The Australia scrum-half Nic White recently explained how the Wallabies were “excited and quietly shitting themselves” at the prospect of Jones’s second coming but Borthwick’s management style is again markedly different.
“We’re given the space to try things, to express ourselves and to ask questions,” added Ludlam. “A big part of taking on messages quickly is [being] comfortable to ask questions, because there’s no wrong question. So it’s been brilliant, to have that emotional connection to the England side, to have that level of detail and the level of comfort.”
