Nick Easter: Steve Borthwick must copy Rassie Erasmus’ principle as England now have the depth to do so
England head coach Steve Borthwick has some selection dilemmas later this year.
The scheduling for England’s summer tour is genuinely tricky, and it’s worth unpacking properly because it tells you everything about the compromises of the modern calendar.
You have the Prem Final on June 20. Two weeks later, your first Test is against South Africa at Ellis Park. Seven days after that, you face Fiji in Liverpool. Running in parallel, across the Atlantic, you have a two-Test series in Argentina against a side currently operating in the top five of the world rankings. Three opponents, two venues, one window, and a squad full of players who have just finished a brutal domestic season. So how do you make it work?
Rassie inspiration
The answer is the two-squad principle, and it’s one Rassie Erasmus has been demonstrating with ruthless effectiveness since 2018. Back then, he sent an experimental side to face Wales in Washington DC whilst his first-choice group stayed home to prepare for England. The Boks lost that Wales game. Then they won the England series 2-0. In 2019, he split his squad again for the Rugby Championship, got criticised for it, and won the World Cup six weeks later. He’s done the same thing in 2023 and across the last two Rugby Championship cycles. Since 2018 the Boks have fielded what most people would call a weakened team on around 20 occasions. They’ve won 17 of them. The principle works, and the numbers don’t lie.
So you apply it here. Your gun side, the XV and core replacements you want on the pitch at Ellis Park, stays together. They play the Prem Final, they get a week’s proper recovery, then they travel to South Africa as a unit. Familiarity matters at international level. Continuity matters. If you’ve just won or lost together in a Prem Final, that shared experience, that emotional residue, it’s gold when you’re preparing for a Test match. You don’t disrupt that by scattering players across three continents. Erasmus has proved that the trust pays off, and the English game now has the depth to do the same.
Two squad principle
You pick your gun side, the XV and bench you want at Ellis Park, and you protect them. Those are the players who carried the load through the Six Nations, the Champions Cup knockouts, and the Prem run-in. Several of them will have been in the Prem Final itself. You give that group a full week off after June 20. No camp, no running, no rubbish. Proper recovery, proper heads-up-on-the-sofa downtime, then they travel and they stay as a unit. They prepare for South Africa. They play South Africa. They come back to familiar surroundings at home for Fiji in Liverpool seven days later and they play together again. Whether they have a win under their belt or a bruising loss, the continuity is there, the combinations have stayed intact, and the emotional residue of a Test against the Springboks is still usable going into the Fijian game.
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Meanwhile, you ship a second squad to Argentina early. Players who have had less domestic game time, hard seasons, bolters, and fringe internationals who need a tour to grow. Two weeks on the training paddock in Argentina is not nothing. It is proper preparation, proper bonding, proper exposure. You then supplement that group with whichever players come out of the Fiji game most able to back up, and you name your Argentina XV from that pool. Two tours running in parallel, two distinct purposes, and you protect your best side from a nonsensical amount of travel.
That is the framework. Now my thinking on the selection.
Selection meeting
At the back, George Furbank is the modern full-back. Safe under the high ball, dangerous in the counter, reads the game. Immanuel Feyi-Waboso and Paul Brown-Bampoe are the wings, Tommy Freeman at 13, Max Ojomoh at 12. Brown-Bampoe has really impressed me at Chiefs and is the form player in English rugby right now. 6’3″, 99 kgs, finishes his chances, and has the aerial quality Bristol and Exeter have been shouting about for months. He slots in on one wing, Feyi-Waboso on the other, and Freeman outside Ojomoh gives you a genuine dual attacking threat. Ojomoh at 12 is big, tall, and once you get him the ball in space he finishes. Against a South African line speed defence that wants to smash you backward, having a 12 who can break the gain line on his own buys you a metre-and-a-half every phase. That metre-and-a-half is the difference between going forward and going sideways.
Fin Smith at 10, Alex Mitchell at nine. Keep the Northampton combination. Mitchell is sharp, opportunistic, and his tempo suits Smith’s instincts. There is no case for fragmenting a half-back pairing that already has Test-level chemistry when the opposition happens to be South Africa.
Up front
Front-row is where the selection conversation gets interesting. Fin Baxter at loosehead is our best scrummager and he will be needed if fit. Joe Heyes at tighthead. Both of them scrummage properly. Jamie George starts at hooker because he is still the most experienced operator and his lineout work against the Springboks is non-negotiable. George is also reaching the end of a glittering career, and we have to be honest about that. The succession planning cannot wait another 12 months, and the three coming through are Theo Dan, Curtis Langdon, and Gabriel Oghre. Oghre is the one who has leapt into the conversation this season. Bristol have him in outstanding form, he is reputed to be the best scrummaging hooker in the Prem right now, and on current trajectory, he is the man for the replacement shirt at Ellis Park. Langdon and Dan are in that conversation too, the argument is live, and on form Oghre is the man.
Maro Itoje and George Martin lock the scrum. Itoje captains and delivers what he always delivers. Martin brings the athleticism, the sheer power, the close-quarter ball carrying. The physical profile of that pairing matters because of what is coming behind them.
Back-row is where the South Africa match is won or lost. Ollie Chessum at six, and I cannot emphasise this enough. You need genuine physicality, genuine grunt, someone who treats 50-50 ball as a contract to win. Chessum is that man, and his lineout work gives you a secondary jumping option when Itoje is targeted. Ben Earl at eight. Earl is the best we have by a mile carrying off the base and breaking with fast feet, provided you give him the support of physicality around him. That support is Martin and Chessum. Earl does the fancy Dan stuff, the turnovers, the counter-attacking carries, the footwork in tight. He is a seven from the southern hemisphere template, and he needs tight forwards who earn him the time to operate. Guy Pepper at seven. Pepper does enormous amounts of unseen work. The tackle numbers are off the scale, the ruck involvements relentless, and when Earl is doing his thing Pepper is the scaffolding around him that keeps the structure standing. You cannot build a back-row against the Springboks without that dynamic.
Fitz Harding deserves a mention here. His form and versatility for Bristol will put him firmly on the radar. He is a different proposition at seven, a more open-running presence, good over the ball, a touch less physical than Earl or Pepper. He is absolutely a player Steve Borthwick should be tracking, and the Argentina tour would be the natural environment to give him proper minutes.
The bench backs up the principle. Oghre for George, Ellis Genge for Baxter, Trevor Davison for Heyes. Alex Coles covers the second-row. Tom Curry at 20 is the replacement who changes a game in the 65th minute. Chandler Cunningham-South offers back-row flexibility. Ben Spencer at 22 closes games out. Marcus Smith at 23 is your second 10 and brings control when the situation calls for it.
Split decision
That is the gun XV. Now for the reality check. England will be the underdogs at Ellis Park. We will struggle to beat South Africa, and we should not pretend otherwise. What we can do is give ourselves the platform. Fresh legs, selection clarity, continuity, the best available physical profile. That is all we control. Fiji at home is where you can very easily come unstuck, and we should not underestimate the size of that challenge for one second. Playing at the Hill Dickinson in Liverpool is a neutral-to-Fiji environment in effect, Fiji’s skill-set travels to hard grounds, and coming off a South African Test you are going to be stiff, bruised, and hunting rhythm. The Fiji match is the game I would most worry about losing.
Argentina is a different proposition again. They are arguably a top-five side in the world right now on the back of their second-row, their back-row, their fly-half, and their midfield. Everyone in world rugby has been watching their trajectory. The wildcard is the Top 14 Final, which runs late in June. Santiago Chocobares, Julián Montoya, Pedro Rubiolo, Joaquín Oviedo, Juan Martín González, Rodrigo Isgro, Juan Cruz Mallía; the list of Pumas playing in France or the PREM is long, and we simply do not know how many will be released in time. That balancing act goes both ways. We have to prepare to face their strongest XV while knowing it might be a shadow of it. Either way, you want your second squad embedded in Argentina by the time the South Africa week kicks off at home. Two weeks acclimatising. Two weeks training. Two weeks of relationships being built. That is the prize.
The two-squad principle is the only answer to a schedule that otherwise breaks you. Protect your gun XV. Keep continuity. Get your shadow group working in-country from day one. Supplement intelligently out of Liverpool. Accept the travel, never let it fracture your best team. That is how you navigate this tour.
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Fixtures and venues
Gallagher PREM Final: Saturday, June 20, Allianz Stadium, Twickenham. KO 15:00 BST.
Round 1, Nations Championship, South Africa v England: Saturday, July 4, Ellis Park, Johannesburg. KO 16:40 BST (17:40 local).
Round 2, Nations Championship, Fiji v England: Saturday, July 11, Hill Dickinson Stadium, Liverpool. KO 14:10 BST.
Round 3, Nations Championship, Argentina v England: Saturday, July 18, Estadio Único Madre de Ciudades, Santiago del Estero. KO 20:00 BST (16:00 local).
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