The showdown talks that transformed Steve Borthwick’s England

Inside story: A critical player-coach summit in York this year was catalyst for clear improvement after defeat by Scotland

It was early evening in late February 2024 and England’s players, who had been arriving in dribs and drabs all day at the Grand Hotel, a grade II Edwardian red-brick building in the heart of York, were now all gathered for perhaps the most important meeting of Steve Borthwick’s tenure as England head coach.
England had suffered bad defeats under Borthwick, most notably the record 53-10 home defeat by France in the 2023 Six Nations and the 30-22 loss to Fiji in a World Cup warm-up match. As much opprobrium as those losses created, Borthwick had anticipated those games as potentially difficult fixtures, like approaching a speed bump in the road. The 30-21 loss to Scotland at Murrayfield in February however, was more like a blown-out tyre – completely unexpected and liable to upend an entire journey.
Three days later, Borthwick had managed to rationalise the volume of unforced errors in attack, but as the squad gathered for the start of a four-day training camp in the Six Nations’ second rest week, there was a sense of foreboding among the squad. Inquests into this type of defeat are never pretty. Changes are pretty much inevitable.
When Borthwick walked into the team room, he was described as serene. There was no sugar-coating the performance, but he told the squad that they had his backing. Mistakes were acceptable but retreating into shells was not. “He said that we played ‘small’,” Tommy Freeman, the winger, said. “That’s a big no-go. We want to play big with our chests out and take opportunities.” 
Richard Wigglesworth, the senior assistant coach, added: “They had to know from us that mistakes were all right but mistakes that we have trained. Let’s make mistakes doing what we were trying to do really well.”
Since those four days in York, England have been a team transformed.
In the landmark performance of the Borthwick reign, they beat Ireland, the World No 1 ranked side, 23-22 at Twickenham before coming within a long-range Thomas Ramos penalty of defeating France in Lyon. In the summer Tests against New Zealand, they again came up just short but were unrecognisable from the side who were previously wedded to a low-risk, high-kicking strategy at the World Cup.
“See the options that we had in the Ireland game, which I think everyone still refers to, the ball goes long over our shoulders and boys are itching to get back and into shape and get ready to attack,” Ollie Chessum, the loose forward, said. “If you want to attack then you will attack and things will start to happen. It was like, ‘let’s just get excited about having the ball in our hands and bringing our best’.”
It is worth emphasising that Borthwick’s side have lost three of their five fixtures since York but they are playing with a verve and vivacity that has not been seen from an England team in years. 
Statistics from Opta Perform show that England have improved their attacking performance in virtually every key metric before and after the Scotland defeat, despite a tougher run of fixtures. 
Tries scored against Tier One opposition jumped from 1.8 to 3.8 while line breaks increased from 3.7 to 6.2 and points per 22 entry have risen from 1.8 to 2.6.
“That was something I have probably not experienced before, coming into England camps it was all regimented and hit up here and we are going to do this and we are going to do that,” Freeman said. “Now we have got all these structures and plays but ultimately we want to be unstructured and catch defences unstructured and create opportunities. 
“Almost be structured to be unstructured in a way. When everyone is on and we are all on the same page, we are making decisions and taking opportunities when they come.
“If there’s some space, then take it regardless of where we are on the pitch. If outside backs are calling for the ball then that’s them playing big and playing with their chests out. We want to take them on in those spaces.”
England’s coaches insist that the attacking evolution was already underway before York, however the results were not immediately evident after stodgy wins over Italy and Wales were followed by a performance at Murrayfield which was typified by George Ford throwing a pass at George Furbank’s head with no Scotland defender in sight. “We were error strewn in that game, but we played it safe,” Wigglesworth, the attack coach, told Telegraph Rugby Podcast.
“It’s not mistakes that we’re bothered about, it is what they look like. We didn’t look like us. We didn’t look like how we trained. We wanted to put us on the field. If we make mistakes, we make mistakes but we want it to look like us. That was the turning point for us, that mentality of actually going out and executing all the stuff that they had been working really hard on.
“York was a big moment for us in terms of addressing the Scotland game, addressing what it looked like and why. Why were we that tight? Why were we playing so far away from the line? Why were we not accurate? We showed what we wanted and what it was going to look like and we fully backed them to do it.”
As Wigglesworth outlined in the podcast, hands-on coaching time is extremely limited in an international environment. At the start of the Six Nations, the priority was embedding Felix Jones’s new defensive system. As a result in one session an England back only touched the ball on a single occasion. Senior players had relayed their concerns to Borthwick, who responded by making the attack the focus.
“I remember in that York week, the coaches made a deal with us,” Chessum said. “We know what the fundamentals of our game are, in terms of set-piece, contestable kicking game and we are going to make a deal that we are not going to spend as much time this week or next week training on those, but you still need to bring them to the game. Let’s have a look at the attack.
“Everyone bought into that. Fordy was a big driver in attack but when you make a big change like that and only have one or two people buy in or leading it… because when they are not there, what do you fall back on? Who leads it? It was a whole squad effort.”
Equally important was the focus on the players’ mentality. Full-back Furbank had been promoted at the expense of Freddie Steward against Scotland and had made a litany of errors in spite of scoring a try. Borthwick immediately pulled him aside in York to tell him that he recognised his positive endeavour and that the results would come. For a player who had been pulled in and out of camps under Eddie Jones, that had a huge effect on his confidence. It was no coincidence that Furbank subsequently delivered stand-out performances against Ireland and in the first Test against New Zealand in July.
“I think what the coaches said to us and even now they tell us is that as players they want us to bring into camp what has got us here,” Chessum said. “Often once you get into an international environment, you can tighten up a little bit. Steve wants us to bring our best.
“York was pivotal in that respect.”