Marcus Smith should be fit for England’s next Six Nations match against Ireland, with Alex Mitchell not far behind, to help rescue their championship.
After the 30-21 defeat by Scotland at Murrayfield, England face finishing a fourth consecutive Six Nations with only two wins. They have not beaten their final two opponents, Ireland and France, since 2020 and 2021 respectively, but their head coach, Steve Borthwick, should have more players to pick from for those matches.
Smith pulled his calf in the build-up to the tournament at a training camp in Girona, Spain, so missed the opening 27-24 win against Italy, the 16-14 victory over Wales and the trip to Murrayfield.
The Harlequins fly half was slated to start throughout the championship as England looked to expand their attack, but in his place George Ford has worn the No 10 shirt, with Fin Smith winning his first three caps off the bench.
Marcus Smith has recovered well, though, and will rejoin full training when the squad regather in York on Wednesday. There were initial fears that Mitchell, who tweaked knee ligaments in an open training session two Fridays ago, would be out for up to two months. However, he could feature against France in Lyon on March 16 after the scrum half received a second, more positive, prognosis last week.
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“I am very hopeful that Marcus will be available for selection for this latter part of the tournament,” Borthwick said.
“We have got positive news on Alex Mitchell’s injury, we are hopeful he will feature in the latter part of this tournament — whether that’s the next game, we’re not sure, but we are hopeful he will be available as well. Alex will come in on Wednesday and continue his rehab. We’ll have a good look at where he is.”
While the availability of Marcus Smith is a positive boost, his return brings more selection headaches for Borthwick. The head coach has regularly bemoaned the lack of cohesion in his team, looking enviously at the back lines of Scotland, Ireland and Italy that have played together for years.
Although his Murrayfield back division had never taken the field together, he did select one of the most experienced half-back pairings England have fielded in Danny Care and Ford, who were winning their 99th and 94th caps respectively. That pairing have played in 48 Tests together, although only 12 of those have been starts.
It is true, however, that Ireland look just fine with Jamison Gibson-Park and Jack Crowley only three matches into their half-back partnership, in the machine-like Irish system, and Scotland’s Ben White and Finn Russell can produce plenty after just 11 starts together.
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Conversely, the French Bordeaux-Bègles pair of Maxime Lucu and Matthieu Jalibert have struggled, despite their long-standing relationship.
That Care and Ford were part of a clumsy performance in Scotland, and conspired to throw several bad passes which led to many of the 25 handling errors, was alarming. Care left after 47 minutes, replaced by Ben Spencer, and Ford followed just after the hour mark, with Fin Smith replacing him.
Borthwick has a problem, then. Mitchell and Marcus Smith have never started together; neither have Spencer and Ford, nor Care and Fin Smith.
The most cohesive pair Borthwick could pick against Ireland are Care and Marcus Smith, who share 96 Harlequins starts, plus three in Tests. Yet that represents untimely tinkering when there is a new system to embed that requires consistency. Also, at 37 years old, Care himself questioned how long he had left in the England team last week.
Borthwick spoke about what a cohesive team can achieve, after the Scotland defeat. “There were mistakes in terms of the systems, mistakes in terms of the players playing together as combinations,” he said. “When you play together for a long time, it’s almost second nature. It’s almost intuitive. You almost don’t need to talk to the player next to you because you know what they’re going to do.
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“Quite clearly you saw a team that wasn’t like that. There is a balance through this period of giving the players the time to develop and the time to understand the relationships that are required, and also for us to develop as a team.”
Mitchell’s injury caused Care’s promotion, and meant Spencer, at 31, won his third cap as a substitute.
The English club partnership that has the most going for it on paper, in terms of youth, cohesion and style, is Northampton Saints’ Mitchell, 26, and Fin Smith, 21.
Yet when does Fin Smith get his run in the team? Ford is in possession of the No 10 shirt and, at 30, is by no means old, and Marcus Smith is returning, while England now face a devilish run of fixtures: Ireland at home, France away then a potentially tricky summer tour match against Eddie Jones’s Japan, before three consecutive Tests against the All Blacks (two in New Zealand and one at Twickenham) followed by South Africa, the world champions, and Joe Schmidt’s Australia.
How Borthwick selects his half backs from now, and evolves the rest of the team away from the old guard, already looks like the great challenge of his England coaching career. His tenure will stand or fall on how well he manages it. Top coaches either galvanise their nation’s players despite its broken system, as Warren Gatland and Gregor Townsend have done, or are given their heads to reform it and grow, like Fabien Galthié did with France before the last World Cup, and Schmidt did with Ireland, which has led to Andy Farrell reaping his harvest.
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If Borthwick cannot do either, England will continue to muddle around in the mid-table of the Six Nations for a good while yet, which will soon lead to impatience from the RFU as well as supporters.
