There are relatively few areas where you would say England are world class, but when it comes to manufacturing external sieges and finding a wall to place their backs against, Steve Borthwick’s team are truly outstanding.

Rightly or wrongly, England feel they have been backed into a corner as a result of an article in The Times which paints an unflattering portrait of the environment under Borthwick. The senior players have come out swinging in defence of their head coach while muttering darkly about external forces trying to sabotage their Nations Championship campaign.

Every single word of criticism will be lovingly harvested and used as kindling to light the mother of all fires inside England’s changing room going into Sunday’s match against Australia. “Playing for England, you often don’t need much else to motivate you,” captain Maro Itoje said. “But when you have external things coming out, saying things which you don’t think are true... we want to play for Steve, we want to represent him in a way that is fitting of the quality of coach he is. We want to represent ourselves, we want to represent the country where we take great pride in playing for England.”

All fine, noble sentiments. It does beg the rather obvious point of what happens if the players claim to be “doing it for Steve” and then England stink the place out, as they did in their last outing at the Allianz Stadium, a 42-21 defeat by Ireland?

I do not believe this will come to pass. The return of props Fin Baxter and Will Stuart for the first time in 2026 considerably buttresses the tight-five resources. Outside South Africa, no other country can boast a more imposing set of heavy cavalry replacements than Luke Cowan-Dickie, Ellis Genge and Stuart – all British and Irish Lions tourists – plus the considerable heft of George Martin. That is a bunker buster of a bomb squad (or Pom squad as it has been dubbed).

As much as England’s players have been talking about the desire to spread their wings, they should be unapologetic in their desire to squeeze the Wallabies to death at the set-piece. Historically, this has been England’s most sure-fire route to victory over Australia. They should make no apology to the Rugby Football Union’s marketing department for wanting to scrum and maul Sunday’s opponents into the dirt. 

With Australia head coach Les Kiss adding a third lock to his starting XV in Jeremy Williams at blindside, the Wallabies seem to know what is coming. In a similar fashion, Borthwick has promoted Ben Curry to openside to combat the jackalling threat of Fraser McReight, who is winning his 50th cap. McReight recently won the John Eales Medal as Australia’s player of the year and can single-handedly swing the contest at the breakdown, which Borthwick believes is refereed differently between the Prem and international level.

“We need to bridge from where players have been to where we need to be, so it is an area of focus,” Borthwick said. “It is a great challenge for players to jump from a couple of training sessions into a Test match.”

This is a common excuse England wield at the start of every autumn campaign: that they have only been together for a minute while their opponents are battle-hardened. It will not wash in the event of a defeat.

While England’s players frequently claim to be blissfully ignorant of what is being said or written in the media, this week they are acutely aware of how much focus is on the position of their head coach. Normally they would shy away from the consequence of the result and instead focus on those interminable “processes”.

Not this week. They recognise it is must-win and it is a challenge they are willing to embrace. “I have full confidence that the public, the English rugby fans, our families, friends in the stands, you guys are going to see a team that’s fighting for one another, that’s going to put their best forward, that’s going to be aggressive, that’s going to take this game to Australia,” Itoje said. “There’s no shying away. It’s the first game of autumn. We want to set the tone of how this autumn is going to go.

“It’s a hugely important game. But I often think about these big games and think, ‘What’s the alternative? Where would you rather be? Would I want to play for a country or a team that is not part of these big games, that doesn’t have consequences?’ I want to be playing in teams where games matter, where there’s something on the line.

“These are the games that get your blood pumping and you realise it’s big. In terms of where we want to go, but also we want to do well in this competition, we want to do well, we want to respond to perhaps the inconsistencies of the Six Nations, we want to show ourselves and show the English rugby fans that we’ve turned a corner. So for that reason, this game is huge.”