Steve Borthwick wasted no time showing he will be a very different England boss to Eddie Jones after insisting he would not become obsessed with next year’s World Cup, and declaring ‘every game matters’.
The 43-year-old was unveiled as Jones’ successor yesterday after he left Premiership champions Leicester to sign a five-year deal.
With 46 days until their Six Nations opener against Scotland at Twickenham, Borthwick must settle quickly into his new role.
But he will not use that tournament to experiment ahead of the World Cup in September, something Jones increasingly did and which contributed to some dismal displays in both this year’s Six Nations and autumn internationals. Setting out his stall, Borthwick said: ‘Every game matters. Every single game you play for England matters.
‘The one that’s in my mind is the start of the Six Nations. We’ll be using every minute to prepare this team as well as we can for the first game of that Six Nations. When we have played that game, we’ll focus on the next one, then the one after that and the one after that.
‘We know the World Cup is not far away but the focus is on the start of the Six Nations.’
Borthwick, who is bringing former Great Britain rugby league star Kevin Sinfield with him from Leicester to be his defence coach, takes over a side who won just five times in the past 12 months – England’s worst year since 2008. He added: ‘When I was a player, when the team was coached by Clive Woodward, in every meeting there were posters on the wall.
‘The one I always referred to said “brilliant basics”. You have to be brilliant at the basics.’
Borthwick, who won 57 caps for his country, again suggested a different approach from the Jones regime when he said: ‘I’ll coach this team my way. The thing I really love about coaching is helping people. I take a huge amount of joy in their happiness.
‘I want to build a winning team which makes the most of our huge potential and inspires young people to fall in love with rugby union the way I did.’
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