”STEVE WAS able to stand up against the very best, but it wasn’t always easy for him,” says Andy Robinson. The former Bath and England head coach is among the best-qualified people to give insight on Eddie Jones’s successor in the Twickenham hotseat.
Before the cameras, Steve Borthwick cuts a calm, focused and almost unflappable figure. Qualities he will need in abundance to turn around the flailing fortunes of a rugby nation picking up the pieces of a disastrous 2022 that saw his predecessor sacked nine months out from a Rugby World Cup.
Robinson, the man who brought the towering Cumbrian south from Preston Grasshoppers as a teenager to join Bath in 1998, saw Borthwick’s abilities at club level and then on the international stage up close, first under Clive Woodward’s reign and then in the top job himself.
“One of his early times working with me with England, Steve ran a lineout session on the Monday of a Test week,” Robinson recalls. “He was challenged by the likes of Simon
