Six Nations Championship: Borthwick dropped from England rugby squad

Steve Borthwick former's captain, who led England in the last Six Nations championship, has been left out of the 32 man elite squad for next season announced by national team manager Martin Johnson on Thursday.
The 30 year old Saracens lock captained the side in 20 Tests over two years until injury forced him to hand over to Lewis Moody for the final Six Nations game against France and the subsequent summer tour down under.
To the second string Saxons squad he is noe demoted where he is joined by wing Ugo Monye, centre Mathew Tait, lock Louis Deacon and hooker Lee Mears who are also discarded from the elite.
The uncapped Gloucester lock Dave Attwood takes Borthwick's place alongside the other three locks - Tom Palmer, Courtney Lawes and the evergreen 36 year old Simon Shaw.
Johnson said, "Leaving Steve Borthwick out was a very hard decision". "He's done a fantastic job for England over the last couple of years and it's the most difficult call we've had to make.
"It is very tough on Steve but it goes to show the depth of talent we've got in that area.
"We want to build on what we've done this summer and a southern hemisphere tour that was hugely beneficial and a actually positive experience for the pair.
"We were able to give lots of opportunities to players and expose them to a high level of rugby."
Leicester scrum half Ben Youngs and prop Dan Cole have been officially included among the elite after establishing themselves in the Test team during the tour of Australia and New Zealand.
Wasps' uncapped centre Dominic Waldouck has also been included at the expense of Tait along with Leeds' South African born flanker Hendre Fourie and Gloucester prop Paul Doran Jones.
Having taken over the captaincy from Borthwick, leading England to a 21-20 victory in the second Test against Australia in Sydney last month, Moody now looks likely to spearhead England's World Cup campaign in New Zealand next year.

Andy Robinson says Six Nations is more important to Scotland than World Cup

It seems there has been a radical rethink at Murrayfield. In place of the system where everything revolved in four-year cycles around the Rugby World Cup, Andy Robinson, the Scotland head coach, has made it clear that the RBS Six Nations Championship is now his over-riding priority, and that even the autumn internationals play a greater role in his day-to-day thinking than the global challenge.

As part of that, he is looking at the summer tours as development projects, which is why he asked for — and got — a schedule for the rest of the decade that gives his team only one match a year against a southern hemisphere big gun, plus a couple of matches against lower-ranked opponents. Robinson is, however, also hoping that the organisers will be able to reinstate midweek matches during most of the trips, giving his squad five or six games against opponents ranging from provincial representatives to teams such as the Springboks, All Blacks or Wallabies.

“The key for me is Scotland getting the right number of matches against the southern hemisphere teams in the autumn and we have got that, playing two of them each year. The other important thing is to focus on the Six Nations. Those games are where we really need to improve and start winning regularly,” he said yesterday.

He is busy finalising the side that will take on Japan A next week — mainly players from the squad preparing to face Argentina next month but most of the Glasgow players are likely to be rested and he will have to call some in from the Scotland A team preparing for the IRB Nations Cup in Romania — but he was also keen to look

“I’m really focusing on the Six Nations and autumn internationals,” he said. “When we are there, the tours will be important, but not to the detriment of the other matches. This stage of the season you can lose the likes of Euan Murray, players who have had a hard season and need to rest or tidy up injuries. We are lucky this year that we don’t have many players who need to rest.

“The Six Nations is a tournament that we play every year. We will deal with the World Cup when we come to it, but it is only once every four years, we will peak towards the Six Nations every year and we are going to be judged on how we perform in it.”

There had been fears among some supporters that Scotland’s failure to land a major tour to a top-tier nation — along the lines of the three-match series that England, Ireland, France and Wales will all be embarking on during the next decade — was a demonstration of Scotland’s falling stock as a world power in rugby. In fact, it is all part the masterplan devised by Robinson and Graham Lowe, the performance director, to ensure a steady progression with the limited resources at their disposal.

“I’m really keen for the players to experience not just playing top-tier Test matches but to experience playing in places like Japan and America. That can help us grow as a team and develop that winning habit. At the end of this schedule we can look at where we are in terms of things like rankings and how many players we have developed and we will have a handle on what direction we will then want to go,” he added.

“Scotland have never played three-Test series against anybody, we do not think that is the right thing for us to do at the moment. We cannot let it get away from success in the Six Nations and the autumn Tests. The summer Tests are a building block.”

Friday start for Six Nations

England and Wales will kick-off their 2011 RBS Six Nations Championship campaigns with a Friday night match in Cardiff.
The two rivals will kick-off next year's tournament at the Millennium Stadium on Friday February 4.
Two previous games have been played on Friday evening, with Wales losing 21-16 to France in Paris in 2009 and Les Bleus winning the fixture in Cardiff this year.
However this will be the first time that the championship has started on a Friday.
Defending champions France will kick-off their challenge on Saturday February 5 against Scotland, with a home game against Wales to round off their campaign on Saturday March 19.
England have three successive home games against Italy (February 12), France (February 26) and Scotland (March 13), before they finish up with a trip to Ireland.
Scotland host Wales and Ireland in rounds two and three and finish with another home game against Italy.
Wales visit Italy in round three and host Ireland two weeks later.

Six Nations Tickets are available online on GigSport.

Wales & England set for Friday Six Nations kick-off

Wales and England will kick off the 2011 Six Nations in the Championship's first Friday night curtain-raiser.
The arch rivals will clash at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium on 4 February for the landmark fixture.
Six Nations games were traditionally played on Saturdays then latterly Sunday but controversial Friday night fixtures were introduced in 2009.
France hosted Wales in the Six Nations' first Friday fixture last year before the reverse game in Cardiff this year.
The full fixture list for the 2011 tournament is due to be announced at midday on Wednesday.
The Six Nations' organisers will confirm Wales are to play in their third Friday night game in successive seasons.

Wales lost 21-16 in Paris in February 2009 before a 26-20 defeat at the Millennium Stadium as Six Nations chiefs hoped to capitalise on the tradition of Friday night rugby in France.
But the Friday night project will be a new experience - although they have played in Paris late on Saturday nights.
The Six Nations' Friday night initiative has sparked complaints from both fans and players who would rather play on traditional weekend days.
Rugby fans have bemoaned the inconvenience of internationals on work days, citing travelling to games in time for kick-off as the major difficulty.
And Wales captain Ryan Jones has also publicly voiced his displeasure on playing on Fridays.
But Six Nations chiefs are keen to continue the ongoing Friday night experiment due to bumper television viewing figures and other commercial rewards.

TeleBest: the 2010 Six Nations dream team

15 - CLEMENT POITRENAUD (France): The Toulouse star (centre) is still remembered for his defensive howler that gifted Wasps 2004 Heineken Cup glory, but he proved a mesmeric attacking force during France's march to the Grand Slam.

The RBS 6 Nations Championship is done and dusted for another season. By common consent, it was a disappointing tournament that offered scarce entertainment and too many ordinary matches, with one team - Grand Slam champions France - head and shoulders above the rest.
Here, PA Sport's rugby union correspondent Andrew Baldock identifies those players who rose above the mediocrity.

Scotland v France Tickets Six Nations 2010

Scotland kick off their six nations campaign when they host France at Murrayfield on Sunday 7th February 2010 with the kick off at 3pm. Scotland finished 5th in the RBS Six Nations Championship in 2005 and will want to improve on that this year, France on the otherhand finished joint 2nd and will be looking to go one better this year and win the 6 Nations Championship for the first time since 2006.Buy Six Nations Tickets for Scotland v France via ticket exchange sites like GigSport. They both have cheap scotland v France Tickets available from around £30.

They are building for success, England yet to prove

Likely without ever intending it, the most damning analysis of England’s performance at Twickenham on Saturday came not from any analyst or expert or writer with finely poisoned quill, it came from Rocky Elsom, the Australia captain.
When asked to what extent he and his team mates had to battle to keep out England, how much hard work and backs-against-the-wall stuff was required to defend their tryline, to stop England from going for the jugular, Elsom said that his team had to work very hard in defence, but he added: “I didn’t feel we were really stretched.”
England may have been going for the jugular, but, as Elsom attested, the home team did not clap eyes on it all day. England are again building, waiting, preparing for greater things, yet appear to remain stuck in a perpetual state of waiting, building and preparation.
There is a Groundhog Day feeling to the start of these autumn series at Twickenham. England start averagely, they perform honestly, valiantly but undazzlingly and then deliver the reminder that that was just the start. That was pretty much the form on Saturday. And it has been pretty much the history of the England team, yes, ever since 2003.
If you plotted a progress curve from that date, it would be flat. There appeared to be an upward turn towards the end of last season’s RBS Six Nations Championship but that seems a blip rather than a foundation from which further improvement may be made. It is all very well to draw a line in the sand and say, “from here we go forward”, but England, for once, need to build momentum and keep it.
Martin Johnson, the team manager, said: “That is the first game this side has played together and we will be better for it for next week.” And quite right, they should improve for Argentina on Saturday.
Yet there seemed less patience in the approach to building and rebuilding from Robbie Deans, the Wallabies coach. “If you look at our experienceacross the board, our cap count is not that high, either,” he said. “But it doesn’t really matter. People don’t really care how many caps you have or how old you are, they expect you to perform.”
Given a choice of the two, who would not prefer the Australian way? On Saturday they threw in a new centre partnership and they delivered on Day 1. And Will Genia, the scrum half, is so fresh to this game that he was buzzing afterwards, not about having beaten England but because he had met Jonny Wilkinson. “I’ll go home and tell my family, ‘I played against Jonny Wilkinson and shook his hand,’ ” he said.
It would, though, be preposterous not to recognise the unusual circumstances here. England’s injured army is astonishing in number. Australia may have established now that Genia and those centres, Digby Ioane and Quade Cooper, are international class, but England likewise made three significant gains last season and of those, Delon Armitage and Riki Flutey are injured, and only Tom Croft remains.
Three finds in one season is a decent haul. And remember that a year ago when Flutey made his debut, he did not exactly look the part. Shane Geraghty hardly looked the part on Saturday but if, by the end of the Six Nations, he and two other new faces have proved their worth at this level, then the pool grows ever deeper.
However, the issue with England and the team’s development is not so much who they play but how. With the bountiful resources at England’s command, the ability to survive the present injury crisis and find enough quality to make the necessary replacements should not be a blessed relief but a fact of life.It should be taken for granted.
In the 67th minute on Saturday, Matt Banahan took up the ball for England over the halfway line and there followed more than a minute of possession for the home side that went left, right, left, right, left, from one side of the pitch to the other until the ball was knocked on by Ayoola Erinle.
The ground that England made in that time was minimal. They got nearly as far as the Wallabies’ 22 and by the time Erinle had dropped it, they were pretty much back where they started. The reason that, as Elsom said, Australia were not exactly stretched was because England were playing such a straightforward game.
England can amass all the talent they like, three new good ’uns a year, but until they find a way of asking questions of opposition defences, they will not stretch them, they will remain where they are: in a perpetual state of building, perpetually preparing to achieve, but never actually getting it completed.