One wouldn’t have expected as cagey a character as Steve Borthwick to address Danny Care’s allegations of the toxic culture that surrounded the Eddie Jones era of English rugby directly, but the Australian’s successor most certainly has a perspective worth hearing. Borthwick, of course, was a key lieutenant and assistant coach to Jones in the period which Care portrays as “like living in a dictatorship, under a despot who disappeared people”.
The retired scrum half’s comments come from his forthcoming memoir Everything Happens for a Reason, with extracts serialised in The Times.There is little information included that has not been whispered, rumoured or insinuated on or off the record in the past, but it shows in stark detail how even one of England’s most senior players felt cowed by a figure he compares to a school bully.
