Steve Borthwick will have to forgo a crucial training camp and guide England into this year’s autumn internationals with a week’s less preparation after the Rugby Football Union arranged an extra lucrative November Test against Australia.
England habitually play three autumn internationals in the same year as a British & Irish Lions tour but the RFU arranged a fourth, which could generate up to £10m in revenue, after its latest accounts reported record losses to reserves of £42m.
The new professional game partnership (PGP) – worth £33m a year to the Premiership clubs – allows for England players to be released for an extra week before the start of international campaigns. They miss a round of domestic fixtures as a result and in recent seasons Borthwick has overseen a warm‑weather training camp in Girona in that time. The extra week’s access to players was also a key part of the previous arrangement between the RFU and the Premiership.
The PGP, signed last summer, is said to account for Borthwick to have four weeks’ access this autumn based on the arrangement that England would play three Tests, however. In effect the extra match against Australia – scheduled for 1 November, before subsequent Tests against Fiji, New Zealand and Australia – is set to replace the training camp in Girona.
It will be a bitter pill for Borthwick to swallow because he considers the extra training week crucial as he tries to build cohesion within his squad. He and his players have talked regularly of the difficulty in coming together from 10 Premiership clubs to gel before a campaign and now Borthwick will have one less week to get everyone on the same page. Players will be available for their clubs the weekend before the Australia Test so Borthwick will have to contend with potentially injury problems, too.
According to the Times newspaper, he is deeply frustrated by the situation.
Last autumn, England lost the first three of their four Tests – going down against New Zealand, Australia and South Africa – before beating Japan. They began the series sluggishly and Borthwick said after the South Africa defeat that his players did not begin the series in good enough condition compared with their south hemisphere counterparts. Getting them up to speed this year will now be an altogether more difficult task.
Compounding matters for Borthwick, a raft of senior players will be away with the Lions in Australia this summer as he takes England on a tour of Argentina and the US, meaning he will not field a full-strength side between the end of the Six Nations and the NovemberTest against the Wallabies. Australia, on the other hand, will be battle-hardened after the Lions tour and the Rugby Championship.
