I'd put my faith in Mitchell to spark England

NO MATTER what Steve Borthwick does he’s just getting lynched by the public There’s a certain pool of people who think Marcus Smith should be at 10, you’ve then got other people who are criticising that he’s named the squad early and then there was massive criticism becasue they didn’t celebrate the players enough when announcing the squad like South Africa or New Zealand.

- KYRAN BRACKEN

The whole pre-World Cup experience, never mind poor displays, has been really negative. Things aren’t good on the field, they’re tumbling down in their entertainment value and the public can’t work out what they’re trying to do.

The old Eddie Jones style was getting England to play their traditional game which was dominate up front, dominate set piece, kick everything and then squeeze – and the stats say we’ll probably win. That game plan seems to have continued. The reason Eddie started to falter though was yes, they could get great wins like against New Zealand in the World Cup, but it became terrible to watch and we weren’t scoring many tries.

The one stat that has improved with Steve coming on board is the set-piece being marginally better than it was, especially the scrum as they had one of the worst in the Six Nations before under Jones. But what we may be seeing is the remnants of Leicester winning the Premiership in 2022 where there were the most amount of kicks in a final, over 130 which is crazy!