Borthwick banks on bibs to beat Italy and ease brewing crisis

Last weekend, France launched a new shirt.

Antoine Dupont, Louis Bielle Biarrey and Matthieu Jalibert, along with footballers Djibril Cisse and Hugo Ekitike, featured in a glossy advert for the powder-blue retro number France will wear against England on the final day of the Six Nations.

By contrast, England, for this weekend against Italy, have opted for the bibs.

Their new-look backline’s only experience together is in training singlets in practice.

Look instead for smaller combinations within the whole and you find only thin threads of understanding.

Fly-half Fin Smith and inside centre Seb Atkinson came up through the Worcester youth system and featured in six first-team games together half a decade ago.

Smith and outside centre Tommy Freeman are both at Northampton, although Freeman is more usually deployed on the wing, rather than midfield, at club level.

Atkinson and wing Tom Roebuck were both part of England’s Test series win in Argentina.

And, er, that’s about it.

Seven players from six different clubs and a whole lot of unknowns.

Head coach Steve Borthwick has, in the past, zeroed in on the continuity, cohesion and the long-term lessons imprinted by the white heat of a Test match – but was citing different evidence this week.

“Much of this backline has trained for four or five weeks together and trained very, very well,” he said.

“I say again how much I value what I see in training. I say it to the players, that I’m watching every bit of training and I value performance in training. This is a very strong message about the ethos within the England team, that you will be rewarded for performing in that sense.”

It is a stark shift. But then England’s downturn over the past two games has been dramatic.

England were not even close to Scotland and Ireland in the past two rounds, losing by 11 and 21 points.

They didn’t just chase the wrong gameplan, make poor decisions and show little signs of being able to switch strategies. Individually they were also under-powered, low on energy and coughing up basic errors.

It has been a collapse on multiple fronts. Two defeats shouldn’t, in theory, weigh so heavy against the 12 wins that preceded them, but it is the manner of England’s losses that has shaken belief in their long-term plans.

After the defeat by Ireland, captain Maro Itoje addressed his team in a huddle on the pitch.

“Success isn’t always linear… success doesn’t always go like that,” he assured them, tracing a smooth upward line though the Twickenham air.

“Sometimes it goes like that,” he went on, his hand then working a more erratic, undulating route upwards.

After Borthwick’s call to swap a total of nine new faces into his starting line-up – a record amount of change for an England team between Six Nations matches – Italy will attempt to plant more doubts.

Back in November, having beaten the Azzurri 32-14 in Turin, South Africa coach Rassie Erasmus predicted Italy would finish second or third in the Six Nations.

“For me, they are a team that is on the up from what we’ve experienced from them,” he said. “We didn’t have an easy ride.”

Erasmus was right. No-one else has this year either.

The sight of Ireland great Tadhg Furlong being hoisted off his feet and through the roof of a set-piece in round two has become emblematic of Italy’s scrum strength.

Flanker Manuel Zuliani has been a breakdown menace. The 25-year-old has the third-highest number of turnovers of any player in the championships and has hit 96 breakdowns, 20 more than any England player has managed.

Out the back, with Juan Ignacio Brex and Tommaso Menoncello reunited in arguably the strongest midfield partnership in the tournament, and brothers Alessandro and Paolo Garbisi pulling strings at half-back, there is a level of understanding in stark contrast to England’s mix-and-match selection.

Italy have lost all 32 of their previous matches against England. In the past, they have had to resort to left-field tactics to try and break that trend.

Flanker Mauro Bergamasco was memorably and catastrophically deployed at scrum-half in a 36-11 defeat at Twickenham in 2009.

Eight years later, then Italy coach Conor O’Shea more successfully poked at a laws loophole and instructed his players not to join any rucks, scrubbing out the offside line and spreading confusion though a swamped England backline. Italy led 10-5 at half-time, but were still reeled in and beaten 36-15.

Paolo Garbisi played down the chances of a historic win earlier this week.

“England are still a very good team, a powerful side, so I don’t see it as a very big opportunity, to be honest,” he told The Rugby Pod.

“If we execute well and if we prepare well, I think we could have a good game, but I don’t see a very big opportunity there.”

Perhaps the only gimmick is the ‘rope-a-dope’ mind games.

After a chastening start to the campaign, England surely won’t be complacent.

They know that a defeat would plunge them into uncharted waters.

It would be the first-ever defeat by Italy. With France to come on the final day it would bring a first single-win Six Nations campaign into view. It would take the Borthwick regime tail-spinning into the deepest crisis of his three years in charge.

The post-tournament post-mortem would be grim indeed.

In the past, Italy away was something of a Roman holiday for England in the Six Nations. No longer.

A high-wire contest, fraught with peril, awaits.

But if England can avoid the early scoreboard slippage that has afflicted them in the past matches and stick tight to the hosts, they may be rewarded.

Italy have scored only six second-half points so far in the Six Nations. Despite their woes, only France have scored more points in the final quarter than England so far.

With the likes of Ollie Chessum, Henry Pollock, Sam Underhill and Marcus Smith on the bench, England have the spark and strength to wrestle a game their way late on.