Category: England Rugby

• Wing has reinjured shoulder and could be out for season
• Injury leads to questioning of RFU’s contract system

England’s Calcutta Cup preparations have been tainted by the fallout from Immanuel Feyi-Waboso’s shoulder injury, which raises questions over the Rugby Football Union’s new central contracting system.

Feyi-Waboso reinjured his shoulder at England’s training base on Wednesday after suffering a dislocation on Exeter duty on 21 December, with the Chiefs confirming he will be sidelined for up to 14 weeks. He is unlikely to play again this season and, as he will be out of action when Andy Farrell names his British & Irish Lions squad, Feyi-Waboso’s chances of touring Australia are hanging by a thread.

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• Winger also a doubt for British Lions’ tour of Australia
• Feyi-Waboso finally had shoulder surgery after delay

Immanuel Feyi-Waboso has finally undergone shoulder surgery, leaving his hopes of being in contention for this summer’s British & Irish Lions tour of Australia in the balance and ruling him out of England’s entire Six Nations campaign.

The 22-year-old sustained a dislocated shoulder in December and the confusion as to how best to treat the injury has dragged on for two months. He is one of 17 England players who were awarded enhanced contracts in October, which give Steve Borthwick the “final say” on all sports science matters.

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Hosts must unlock solutions to the deadly duo when the teams contest the Calcutta Cup at Twickenham on Saturday

No one can say England have not been forewarned. Their recent record against Scotland – one win in their past seven Calcutta Cup encounters – has involved a range of painful indignities but two familiar themes stand out. Their names are Finn Russell and Duhan van der Merwe and, fitness permitting, the deadly duo will be back in harness in London on Saturday.

If Russell has been the deft-fingered architect of many of Scotland’s best moments, Van der Merwe has been the breeze-block destroyer of English reputations in each of the last two years. Who can possibly forget his brace of tries at Twickenham two years ago or, indeed, his hat-trick in the same fixture at Murrayfield 12 months ago?

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• Harlequin missed important kicks in win against France
• ‘He’s a world class goal-kicker so it’s very simple’

Steve Borthwick has given the “world class” Marcus Smith a vote of confidence as England’s goal-kicker for Saturday’s Calcutta Cup after sticking by the Harlequins playmaker despite his recent wobble from the tee.

Smith will retain the kicking duties against Scotland despite handing over to Fin Smith against France, when the Northampton fly-half guided England to a 26-25 victory. Marcus Smith missed two straightforward kicks against Les Bleus in the second half, hooking both left, before Fin Smith took over and kicked crucial conversions in the 71st and 80th minute.

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The community game’s feedback for the Bills, Sweeney and Beaumont, makes for painful reading as RFU hits the road in week of Calcutta Cup

You may have noticed that the sports pages are less, well, sporty than they once were. There is rather more chance of reading stern-faced stories about Sir Jim Ratcliffe and the Glazers or Manchester City’s latest legal dispute than, say, the muddy winter joys of grassroots rugby union. It is the way of the modern world and, anyway, England playing Scotland in the Six Nations this Saturday is a bigger deal, right?

Well, yes and no. If you are counting the beans inside the Rugby Football Union’s offices in Twickenham there is barely a contest. The Six Nations annually bankrolls the rest of the domestic game: it is the commercial goose that lays the golden Gilbert‑shaped eggs. Never mind the scoreboard, let’s keep the corporate guests well fed and watered. It’s all about the bottom line.

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• Scotland have won the last four meetings in Six Nations
• Steve Borthwick using clips of defeats for motivation

England players have been shown Calcutta Cup video nasties for extra motivation as they seek to end a miserable run against Scotland on Saturday.

Steve Borthwick’s side will bid for a first win against the auld enemy in five years buoyed by their one-point victory against France last time out. But the head coach is waiting on the second-row George Martin, who did not take part in full training on Monday because of discomfort in his knee.

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Scrum-half’s contribution during the end of France win justified faith in giving Northampton man full 80 minutes

It wasn’t just the way Steve Borthwick used his bench that shaped England’s victory over France, it was the way he didn’t use it, too. Instead of bringing on Harry Randall, Borthwick backed Alex Mitchell to play a full 80 minutes, something he hasn’t allowed any scrum-half to do since Mitchell last did it during England’s tour of New Zealand.

Mitchell missed most of the intervening games while he was recovering from a neck injury, including the three defeats in the autumn when Borthwick chopped and changed between Randall, Ben Spencer and Jack van Poortvliet in the interim.

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As a sports journalist, I learned more about these players in a couple of episodes than years of press conferences

Things are a little different around England’s training base at Pennyhill Park this year. It’s not just that they have a new captain or a couple of uncapped players, it’s that you have to go way back to 2009 to find the last time that one, the other, or, more often than not, both of Ben Youngs and Dan Cole weren’t with the squad.

The Leicester pair have been ever-present through the best and worst of the past 15 years of English rugby, until Youngs, 35, retired from Test rugby after the last World Cup. His great mate Cole, 37, went on one more year, until the head coach, Steve Borthwick, finally decided to leave him out of the squad this spring. Cole hasn’t officially announced his own international retirement but only because, he says drily, that “it would feel like locking the stable door after the horse has already bolted”.

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Fin Smith’s control at fly-half looks the better option but that need not mean the end of the Harlequin’s Test career

All too often, both in life and rugby, people prefer to stick to a certain template rather than try something different. Many, for example, still envisage the perfect No 10 to be an impish genius and, ideally, Welsh. Those who do not quite fit the mould – particularly those taking over from a recently departed legend – have to work doubly hard to shift entrenched perceptions.

Dan Biggar, Wales’s most-capped fly-half, was instructive on the subject in his thought-provoking autobiography, The Biggar Picture. “Throughout my career I’d constantly had to silence the critics. I was too slow. I stood too deep. I was petulant, aggressive and one-dimensional. I kicked too much and ran too little. I was, in short, not your typical Welsh fly-half. Where Barry John would paint you a picture, I’d draw you a diagram.”

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Emotional success against France captures imagination and showcases the charm and unpredictability of the Six Nations

After it was all over on Saturday night, England’s players peeled away to seek out their loved ones in the stands. Fin Smith’s parents, Andrew and Judith, were awaiting their match-winning boy and the shared family embrace, when it came, was among the more heartwarming things you’ll see in sport all year. All those unsung hours on school and club touchlines, all those youthful ups and downs, distilled into a tight group hug of the purest emotional joy.

In a strange way it also captured the tangled charm of the Six Nations. Andrew Smith is a proud Scot who met his wife – whose father Tom represented Scotland and the British & Irish Lions – at a post-match curry night in the clubhouse at London Scottish. What a Proclaimers-style 500-mile walk it has been from there to celebrating one of England’s more stunning modern wins with their red-rose-wearing son. Heaven knows how they will feel when Scotland head south next week for a Calcutta Cup clash now laden with even more resonance.

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• Both players could return for business end of tournament
• England beat France on Saturday to get back in title hunt

England are hopeful George Furbank and Immanuel Feyi-Waboso will be back for the business end of the Six Nations campaign to bolster their title push after keeping their hopes alive with victory against France.

The Northampton full-back ­Furbank has been out of action since December with a broken arm while Feyi-Waboso is nursing a shoulder injury and both were considered in danger of missing out on the entire championship. But after the last‑gasp win on Saturday kick‑started England’s campaign Steve Borthwick revealed both ­players could yet return for his side’s run-in.

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Last-gasp Six Nations victory over France could signal a new dawn but may simply be the law of averages at play

Not quite the complete works of Shakespeare, but eventually the monkeys and their typewriters were going to script a last-gasp England victory. Leaving a frazzled Twickenham on Saturday night you could not help but wonder how much significance the history books will end up affording this thrilling contest.

Has a corner been turned, has “the dam broken” as Ben Earl had promised it would, or was this, as captivating as it was, simply evidence that a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day? That while there are no certainties in professional sport, if England kept putting themselves in contention in the final throes of matches, that if they came up against a side with what at times looked like a nihilistic contempt for the try-line, eventually, after all those near misses, they would end up on the right side of the scoreboard. Is this a new dawn or simply the law of averages at play?

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The world’s greatest teams know who plays when everyone is fit and horses-for-courses selection won’t help Steve Borthwick

When it comes to team selection, it’s important to remember that everything is subjective. Different coaches, five million different fans and the 80,000 people in the stadium will all have different views, different affiliations and different opinions about who should be playing for England. It plays a large part of every Test week and it’s fantastic because it creates debate, it gets people talking.

It is not specific to England either but the problem with Steve Borthwick’s recent team selections is that I just wish it felt like it was coming from a place of understanding exactly what his best team is and precisely how to deliver their best gameplan. I’m not sure we have clarity on either of those things yet and as much as I understand the notion of horses for courses, I would much prefer to have a sense that selection is first and foremost about yourselves rather than the opposition.

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The one thing France fear about England isn’t their scrum, maul or back-play – it’s their attitude when they beat them

Always eager to keep its readers up to speed, the Guardian marked the inclusion of the French rugby team in the Five Nations by providing a quick glossary of pertinent terms. “Marquer” was one, “plaquer” another, “melee” a third, all familiar enough now after a hundred-and-some years of playing each other. Another essential phrase has come into the French game in that time, one borrowed from the English, who are, amusingly, almost entirely oblivious to its significance: “Sorry, good game.”

This phrase, or something like it, is what the English captain Vince Cartwright said to the French players after they went down 35-8 in the first fixture at the Parc des Princes in Paris in 1906. “Sorry, good game,” or something like it, is what Ian Preece repeated after he had kicked the winning drop goal in an 8-3 victory in 1949, when France were on a run of 43 years without winning in England. “Sorry, good game,” is, most indelibly, what the French heard, over and over again, from Will Carling, during the back half of a run of eight straight English victories that spanned 1989-1995.

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• France-based players ineligible under RFU rules
• Itoje reveals he rejected moves abroad to play for England

The France captain, Antoine Dupont, has revealed he is surprised by the Rugby Football Union’s policy that bans Steve Borthwick from picking players based abroad and admitted he is glad he will not lock horns with his Toulouse teammate Jack Willis on Saturday.

England host Dupont and co at Twickenham as they seek to improve a run of seven defeats in nine matches and do so without a raft of players who are based in France’s Top 14 and therefore considered unavailable.

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