Amid the scars left by a life in the second row, Steve Borthwick has a good poker face.
He doesn’t have many tells, keeping his emotions under tight rein and his thoughts to himself.
But Tuesday was no bluff.
By naming his team two days early, Borthwick put his cards on the table and challenged Ireland to prove him wrong.
England stuck with Marcus Smith at fly-half and Freddie Steward at full-back, picked debutant Cadan Murley on the wing and bet the house on a back row of Ben Earl, Tom Curry and his twin brother Ben.
The selection was a statement of intent; to win the air, to sap Ireland’s speed with a nuisance ground game and throw a defensive blanket over their attack.
For 40 minutes, Borthwick’s plan paid out.
England scored the opening try early as Smith ran back a kick, Ollie Lawrence busted a hole and Henry Slade’s cute grubber put the ball on a platter for Murley.
Earl and the Twindaloo – Sale fans’ nickname for the Curry brothers – were causing Ireland’s attack indigestion.
They steamed into the breakdown, slowing the ball as potential attackers were drawn in to secure the supply lines.
The defence was up flat and fast, scattering Ireland’s attacking patterns. And by shortening the line-out – a potential area of weakness – they thinned out Ireland’s thicket of jumpers.
New skipper Maro Itoje showed his captaincy smarts, making sure that Ben O’Keeffe saw and heard the sly hold that Tadhg Beirne had of his leg, leaving the referee no option but to chalk off an Ireland try.
It was promising.
Having trailed at the break in every Six Nations match last year, England reached 40 minutes five ahead.
It could have been even better.
They were hobbled by Smith’s sin-binning for 10 minutes.
After some courageous defence it was only on the last passage of that power-play that Ireland managed to score, as James Lowe shrugged off Alex Mitchell like a wet cagoule to put in Jamison Gibson Park.
The Aviva jangled with nerves at the interval.
Memories of 2019, when an unfancied England side plotted the perfect opening-day heist to derail Ireland, suddenly seemed more vivid.
By full-time though they, like England, had disintegrated.
#Ireland #England #Steve #Borthwick #plan #crumbles #Dublin
