Borthwick's England Stuck Between Reset and Reckoning

Two Years From Australia, England Still Search for an Identity

Steve Borthwick has held the England job since December 2022. He inherited a squad in open revolt after Eddie Jones' chaotic second stint and was tasked with two things at once: stabilise the dressing room and build toward the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia. The first part happened quickly. The second remains unresolved.

England's Nations Championship performances have become the most reliable measuring stick for where this team actually stands. Not in the glossy November internationals against tier-two opposition, but in the compressed, high-stakes format of the annual tournament, where Borthwick's side gets stress-tested. The results keep producing the same uncomfortable ambiguity. The question circulating through Twickenham corridors and Rugby Football Union review meetings does not yet have a clean answer.

From Rescue Mission to Plateau

Borthwick's tenure can be split into three movements.

The rescue phase ran from the 2023 Six Nations through the World Cup in France. England were limited, attritional, and punched above their expected ceiling by reaching the semi-final against South Africa. That performance, a one-point loss to the Springboks, briefly reframed the narrative around Borthwick's competence.

Then came the plateau. The 2024 Six Nations delivered three wins and two defeats. England beat Ireland in a tactical masterclass at Twickenham but collapsed in Edinburgh and struggled to impose themselves on Italy in a narrow win. The attacking structure remained mechanical. Defensively, the blitz contact system designed by Aled Walters and Felix Jones arrived in pieces, with the latter's long-notice resignation creating a coaching vacuum. Jones left before he could fully implement what Borthwick had hired him to install. The defensive system was half-built.

By the time the 2025 Nations Championship rolled around, England were carrying the same structural issues into a fresh cycle. With Australia 2027 now roughly two years away, the runway for experimentation is shortening.

Win Rates Hold Steady, Patterns Tell a Different Story

England's win rate under Borthwick across the Six Nations sits around 50%. That is not regression. It is stagnation.

• 2023 Six Nations: 3 wins, 2 losses
• 2024 Six Nations: 3 wins, 2 losses
• 2023 World Cup: 5 wins, 2 losses
• 2024 Autumn internationals: 2 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses

The win column stays steady. The manner of the wins and the identity of the losses tell a different story.

England under Borthwick have developed a habit of losing the matches that define them. The Scotland defeat at Murrayfield in 2024 was tactically outclassed. The losses to France, to South Africa in the autumn, and the failures to close out tight contests all point to a team that plays within a narrow margin and lacks an alternative. When the Borthwick game plan works, it produces clean breakdown ball, structured territorial kicking, and a defence that suffocates. When it breaks, England have no second phase. The squad appears to run out of on-field answers.

Structure Without Execution

The Nations Championship exposes the gap between Borthwick's philosophy and his team's execution of it.

Borthwick believes in a structured, territory-based game. Possession kicked long. Pressures applied through the aerial contest and set-piece dominance. Scrum penalties converted into points. The kicking tee used as a primary weapon rather than a supplementary one. There is nothing inherently wrong with that philosophy. South Africa won a World Cup playing it. Leicester-era and Saracens-era rugby is proven. The problem is that Borthwick's England do not yet execute the system at a comparable level to the teams who win playing it.

The breakdown work, once a Borthwick specialty on the coaching staff, has been inconsistent. The lineout maul, supposed to be a strength, misfires under pressure. And the defensive system Jones was brought in to construct remains a work in progress after his departure.

Meanwhile, the attacking backline shapes remain among the most predictable in Tier One rugby. Marcus Smith, deployed at fly-half or full-back depending on the week, has been forced to operate within structures that do not maximise his instinctive playmaking. Selection decisions have produced stop-start cohesion in the threequarter line.

Ten Tests to Settle the Unanswered Questions

Two years sounds like a long time. In international rugby, it is not.

The 2026 Six Nations represents the last full tournament before World Cup preparations begin in earnest. After that, Borthwick has a summer tour, an autumn series, and then England enter the pre-World Cup cycle where results matter less and conditioning experiments take priority. That leaves roughly 10 competitive Tests between now and the point where the squad is locked in for Australia. Ten matches to resolve the defensive system, settle on a backline spine, and establish whether the attacking structure can stretch teams beyond a narrow defensive kicking game.

The RFU's review structure means Borthwick's position is not under immediate threat. Bill Sweeney and the Twickenham leadership have invested heavily in the Borthwick rebuild, from the Jones hire to the coaching succession plan that saw Joe El-Abd arrive. Tearing it up now would admit defeat on a process still technically in development.

But patience has a shelf life. England rugby crowds have grown visibly restless during flat performances at Twickenham. The boos that greeted the autumn loss to Australia were not theatrical targeted noise. They were the sound of supporters who watched a Borthwick side lose to a Wallabies outfit that had won twice in Europe in the previous decade.

Nations Championship cycles tend to sharpen ambiguities into clarity. By the end of the tournament, the table does not lie about where a team sits in the European pecking order. England keep finishing in the middle of the Six Nations table. The middle is exactly where a team with no clear identity belongs. Borthwick has time, but not much of it. The 2027 World Cup draw is set. England know their path. What they do not yet know is which version of themselves will turn up to walk it.