‘They will be bricking it’ – Ex-England wing warns Steve Borthwick over ‘anxiety-inducing’ selection merry-go-round

Former England wing Jonny May insists that constantly chopping and changing the team will not help them going forward.

The Red Rose opened 2024 with successive victories over Italy and Wales, naming the same 23 for both – although Ellis Genge’s injury did force a late withdrawal against the Azzurri.

They then made alterations for the Scotland encounter, dropping both centre Fraser Dingwall and full-back Freddie Steward for the Calcutta Cup clash.

England also lost Alex Mitchell to injury, which meant Danny Care came in to start, while the props were changed, with Genge and Dan Cole alongside captain Jamie George in the front-row.

Need consistency early on

Although they are not mammoth alterations, May does not believe that it is necessarily healthy for a squad, especially with Steve Borthwick’s men in the early stages of their development.

May has therefore warned the head coach against being too reactionary for their next match when they take on the dominant force in the Six Nations, Ireland.

“How many games has one centre partnership gone in a row? It’s Fordy (George Ford) with those two centres (Henry Slade and Ollie Lawrence) and then (George) Furbank at full-back,” he told The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast.

“Dingwall has done a good job for two weeks, Ollie Lawrence has been unbelievable in the Premiership but then it’s like, ‘okay, now we’ve lost, that wasn’t the answer, we need to change it.’

“That’s where it’s hard because you’re thinking, ‘bloody hell, I’ve got one game here to nail it or else I’m out.’

“I’ve been there, they will all be bricking it. They will be coming in thinking, ‘Am I getting picked?’ You’re spending two weeks feeling sick wondering if you’re going to get picked.”

May also thinks that the worries about selection leads into the matches, with the players knowing that they have to perform immediately or risk being dropped.

“It’s something I do not miss. They are going in thinking, ‘what is going to happen? Am I even playing?’ Nobody will have a clue, it’s not good for the anxiety,” he said.

“That feeds into how you play as well. If you’ve used up all your anxious energy and stress before you’ve even got to the game to get picked, it’s difficult to perform.

“I don’t know what the team line-up [will be]. All the players are brilliant players but for the life of me I don’t know what the team’s going to be.”

Comparing it to Eddie

The ex-England wing looked back on his time with Eddie Jones and how the former head coach would quickly discard players after picking them.

“By the end of his (Jones) cycle, we knew what we were about and we got there in the end but Jesus Christ the amount of people that got one, two, three caps,” May said.

“Maybe that’s what Steve is working through now but I don’t know what the solution is.

“You could go, ‘here are the 15 central contracts who are your bankers’, but what happens if they start playing poorly?

“And then the pressure of the media, particularly in this country, and the expectation of an England team, as soon as something doesn’t go right, you feel like you’ve got to change people, you’ve got to be so reactionary.

“Any player would say consistency and trust, if it’s given to you by a coach, is without doubt the best way to develop partnerships, the best way to perform, the best way to have confidence.

“I just feel stressed on behalf of the players.”

May did finish on a positive note, though, when assessing England’s chances of upsetting the apple cart in Round Four.

“Regardless of who takes to the pitch, I think this will be Ireland’s toughest game of the Six Nations,” he added.

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