Matt Dawson column: ‘Steve Borthwick played a blinder with bench selection’

It is never spoken about by Steve Borthwick or his players, but we are now two years out from the Rugby World Cup in Australia.

There will be a handful of players who play a lot of rugby over the next two years and still don’t get picked, such is England’s impressive strength and depth.

The starting selection in Saturday’s 25-7 win over Australia was Borthwick giving a nod to the stars of the successful summer tour to Argentina.

You are talking about the top echelons of international team sport when you have benches like England’s – which featured six British and Irish Lions tourists.

For a long, long time, England have not had a bench like that.

I cannot see Borthwick consistently going with that much power on the bench, because when you are playing against better sides, you need that experience, power, skill, and finesse from the start of the game.

After all that graft in the first 60 minutes, if you are Australia and you see a Lions front row of Ellis Genge, Luke Cowan-Dickie, and Will Stuart coming on, you are thinking, “oh, goodness”.

You have also got the individual brilliance and capability of Henry Pollock – able to grab a ball one-handed and be in the right place at the right time to score a vital try.

It is a fantastic weapon to have, and it is now being deployed in such a strategic and successful manner.

Looking at this England squad – and we have been saying this for a while – there is just something a little bit different about the make-up, the talent, the willingness to be part of the extended squad, and the culture within it.

Everybody is invested, and everyone can see and enjoy the success England are having at the moment.

Hooker, number eight, scrum-half, fly-half, inside centre and full-back are often really core positions to be very successful at World Cups.

Consistency in those positions shows they are ready to go through to the World Cup – it will be interesting to see how Borthwick plays it this autumn.

I think the full-back and fly-half positions are still very much up for grabs and a little in the midfield, but Tommy Freeman has had a really good start to his Test career at 13.

Maybe having two or three fly-halves for different styles and different oppositions is the way forward. The same can be said for the back row.

Borthwick played a blinder with his selection against the Wallabies, who delivered as poor a performance as I have seen from them.