Borthwick given RFU backing for World Cup even if England flop in Nations Championship

RFU chief Bill Sweeney offers full support to Borthwick

England boosted by fly-half Fin Smith returning to training

Steve Borthwick has been given the Rugby Football Union’s unequivocal backing to lead England into next year’s World Cup even if the side flop this autumn.

In September Borthwick’s contract was extended to after the 2028 Six Nations, despite England’s worst ever Six Nations performance earlier this year, to avoid speculation in the buildup to next year’s tournament. But the head coach remains under pressure on the back of five defeats in the last seven matches.

England have, however, been boosted with the fly-half Fin Smith coming through a key training session on Wednesday before an autumn campaign that features clashes against Australia, Japan and New Zealand as well as a rankings match on the inaugural Nations Championship finals weekend.

Nearly four years ago, Eddie Jones was sacked after an autumn that featured a defeat by Argentina, victory over Japan, a draw with the All Blacks and defeat by South Africa, which was greeted with a chorus of boos by the Twickenham faithful. But the RFU chief executive, Bill Sweeney, said he could not see a scenario where Borthwick would be replaced, irrespective of results this November.

“We’re committed to Steve, we’ve extended his contract to the middle of 2028,” said Sweeney. “We believe in what he’s doing. We had a difficult Six Nations this year, we accept that, but we just want to see continued progress and we’re backing him to get that done.

“We just felt that going into a World Cup is a tough enough challenge anyway. We wanted our coaching team just to be focused on the World Cup, not be thinking about, ‘oh, I don’t have a role lined up’ and be thinking about that in the buildup. It was to take away any distraction around that, and take that same coaching team through into the transition into the Six Nations in 2028. That was the sole intention. It was the same process with the women’s team.”

After England’s first ever defeat by Italy in March, the RFU took the unprecedented step of offering conditional support for Borthwick, backing the head coach but calling for improvements in summer Tests against South Africa, Fiji and Argentina. Sweeney offered further qualified backing after the Six Nations before Borthwick was again endorsed by the anonymous post-championship review.

England proceeded to lose heavily against the Springboks, thrash Fiji and edge past Argentina to sit third in the northern hemisphere Nations Championship pool but discipline – one of the few areas in need of improvement identified by the review that was made public – remained a problem with Borthwick’s side receiving 14 yellow cards and one red in 2026 to date.

“It was a really thorough in-depth review,” added Sweeney. “It happens after every competition. The mini version happens virtually after every single game, but we have a review after every comp. We were clearly very disappointed about the Six Nations this year. Nobody wanted to see that performance. It did highlight some areas that required action that happened, were followed up on, and we’re confident that that’s had an effect.”

Smith is primed to line up against the Wallabies after completing Wednesday’s training session. The 24-year-old fly-half has been nursing a calf injury but remains on track to give Borthwick a timely fillip. “Fin trained today and got through all right so we are cautiously optimistic that he’s available for selection,” said England’s defence coach Richard Wigglesworth, who revealed the 200m world silver medallist and five-times European champion sprinter Amy Hunt visited the squad on Wednesday. “We’ll need to see what the next 24 hours are like in terms of his reaction but he did well today. We’re training Friday, so obviously he’s got to train then, but we’ll know before then the state of availability. We’re pretty optimistic.”

Smith has emerged as an integral part of Borthwick’s side, having started the last five England Tests and cemented his position as Borthwick’s first-choice fly-half. “He looked good,” said the back-rower Ben Earl. “Obviously, we know Fin, he’s a class, class player. He’s been in unbelievable form for a number of years. He deserves to be given the time to give himself the best chance to play. He looked very good today and I’m really looking forward to seeing him go.”