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When Warren Gatland named his British & Irish Lions squad to tour New Zealand in 2017 he included 16 England players. Stalwarts such as Dylan Hartley, Chris Robshaw, Joe Launchbury and George Ford were still notable absentees but England had won the previous two Six Nations titles, 17 of Eddie Jones’s first 18 matches and, accordingly, their contingent was substantial.
The very next day Jones named his England squad for a tour of Argentina. He refused to engage in the merits of the selected Lions touring party but at the time you sensed Jones did not particularly like Gatland hogging the spotlight. England might have lost their most recent match, against Ireland in Dublin, denying them another grand slam, but the Australian was still basking in an extended honeymoon period and all eyes were on his old adversary. Jones proceeded to make a statement with his squad selection and it did not feel like coincidence that he was doing so 24 hours after Gatland.
He cast aside a raft of fringe players, those who might have presumed to step up in the absence of so many Lions, and picked from the next tier down. Joe Cokanasiga was plucked from the Championship, Piers Francis from the Blues in Auckland and a pair of teenage flankers from Sale. “We have focused particularly on youth because we want to find players who are going to be better than the 16 players going on the Lions tour,” said Jones and, to give him his dues, one of those young Sharks, Tom Curry, was starring in a World Cup semi-final two years later.
In hindsight this was the first evidence of Jones’s scattergun selection. Of casting his net far and wide, picking youngsters when they were palpably not ready for the international stage and dispensing with them just as quickly. For the success story of Curry, read the plight of Jack Maunder, the Exeter scrum-half who made a three-minute debut against Argentina, aged 20, but was never capped again.
Four years later, with 12 players away with the Lions, Jones handed debuts to Marcus Smith and Freddie Steward in the summer series against the USA and Canada and proclaimed the birth of a “new England”. He also condemned Lewis Ludlow to quiz-question obscurity by naming him captain for his two and only England caps. And when news of Smith’s secondment to the Lions tour filtered through while he was still on the pitch against Canada, it was easy to imagine Gatland having a chuckle to himself at expense of his old sparring partner. Thunder stolen again.
All of which brings us to Steve Borthwick’s England and their first return to Argentina since 2017. He knows all about that tour because, while he too was away with the Lions as an assistant, he was still having to review England matches while in New Zealand as Jones’s forwards coach. He will know, then, that Jones’s side won two thrilling contests against the Pumas, he will know that four years ago they also beat the USA – not particularly convincingly – and thumped a dreadful Canada side and he will know the opportunities and the pitfalls that come with selecting an inexperienced squad.
The mistakes that Jones made, the shrewd moves too, show how challenging the season after a Lions tour can be. For while England had 100% records in the 2017 and 2021 autumn campaigns, they nose-dived in the 2018 and 2022 Six Nations tournaments, winning only two matches in each and on both the subsequent summer tours Jones barely survived the sack.
Early next week Borthwick names his first squad of the summer. He will host a mini-training camp but will be without the 13 Lions and players from Bath and Northampton given their involvement in European finals while Ollie Lawrence and George Martin are notable injury absentees.
Chief among his priorities is to select a captain for the two Tests against Argentina and the one against the USA because Maro Itoje is fulfilling that role with the Lions. The obvious candidate is Jamie George, though returning to a player stripped of the honour four months previously requires a certain amount of diplomacy, closely followed by Ford.
Borthwick will also have to factor in the likelihood of players being whistled up to the Lions. They are already looking thin in certain positions for their warm-up match against Argentina in Dublin, which is the day before England kick off their summer against a France XV.
Borthwick is, however, selecting from a position of strength. The upward trajectory is pronounced after the record victory in Cardiff to round off a positive Six Nations campaign. He was no doubt planning on giving Henry Pollock his first Test start – that honour may now fall to Andy Farrell – but Borthwick has already cautioned against picking youth for the sake of it. “It has to be someone right in contention to be starting and get lots of game time,” he said. “Coming into the senior squad just to be on the fringe is not what we want to do.”
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He is also smart enough to know the positions in which he lacks depth and to take full advantage of the opportunity presented this summer. As such, while the back-three contingent is likely to have a familiar feel with George Furbank, Tom Roebuck, Manny Feyi-Waboso and Steward all expected to be available, he would be wise to reintegrate Henry Arundell at the first possible opportunity. He has had a torrid season at Racing 92 but is joining Bath next season and possesses raw attributes that cannot be overlooked.
Borthwick would also do well to deploy Oscar Beard, Max Ojomoh or Seb Atkinson alongside Fraser Dingwall in the centres where the talent pool is shallow.
In the front row it is time to give Asher Opoku-Fordjour and Afo Fasogbon their first Test starts, perhaps either side of the experienced George. Lock – particularly those with heft – is an area of chief concern for Borthwick so while he may persist with Chandler Cunningham-South’s conversion to the second row, Bath’s Ewan Richards may find himself involved in Argentina. Junior Kpoku has been linked with a move back to the Premiership but until the ink is dry he remains unavailable.
The back-row options are stacked but Ben Curry, if fit, should be the mainstay of any Test trio with Bath’s Guy Pepper – this season compared to Richie McCaw by his head coach, Johan van Graan – precisely the sort of player Borthwick should be blooding. Jones’s tenure demonstrated that using these tours to give youngsters their shot is a double-edged sword but England have a challenging autumn ahead and Borthwick must be prepared for a post-Lions hangover next season.
