Category: Rugby Union

• 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.

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.

• 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.

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.

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”.