The depth that has been nurtured in Argentina over the summer has created a squad of many strengths and high competition.<\/p>\n
Borthwick has been adept at picking when to stick and twist with his team. <\/p>\n
His faith in Dingwall, whose strengths are more subtle than some of his midfield rivals, paid off. His call to usher Ford, third choice fly-half in the Six Nations, back to the forefront has also been vindicated.<\/p>\n
The effect of his much-vaunted bench in the second half was less noticeable. <\/p>\n
When he pulled the pin on the ‘Pom Squad’, there was not the immediate momentum swing we expected.<\/p>\n
But that was partly because the starters had performed so well.<\/p>\n
Ultimately England had too many attacking dimensions, too many options to be contained by New Zealand.<\/p>\n
When Pollock poked through that final kick and Roebuck picked up and went in, it brought up an almost surreal ’33-19′ on the Twickenham scoreboard.<\/p>\n
Only three short of England’s famous 2012 win over the same opposition, but in excess of all but England fans’ wildest expectations.<\/p>\n
Three years later of course, that 2012 team flamed out of their home Rugby World Cup, failing to get out of the pool stage.<\/p>\n
As the rafters rocked, the pints spilled and a joyful giddiness filled the Allianz Stadium bowl, it felt impossible that this team would follow the same trajectory.<\/p>\n
Like a George Ford bomb, they are surely still rising.<\/p>\n
Borthwick, as ever, was keeping a lid on emotions and expectations afterwards.<\/p>\n
“It’s a team that’s developing, a team that’s growing,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s a team that needs experience together and that’s exactly what they’re doing each time – go away each week and train really hard and being focused on what to improve, and that’s showing on the pitch.<\/p>\n
“The team has a lot of belief – in our preparation, in the way we are trying to play and in the ability we have within the team.<\/p>\n
“This is about trying to achieve special moments, special memories. Today is one of them.”<\/p>\n
If they can subdue a dangerous, if tired, Argentina side next weekend, that would be 11 successive wins for England and only one defeat in 2025.<\/p>\n
The numbers that were perhaps most telling though were on the Twickenham decibel meter, showing the love for a team that has not always felt it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The depth that has been nurtured in Argentina over the summer has created a squad of many strengths…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-265348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}