- England will take on back-to-back world champions at Twickenham on Saturday
- Borthwick’s side have been dealt recent narrow defeats by their opponents
- Two of the backs have been dropped for the crunch autumn international clash
England head coach Steve Borthwick has wielded the axe on backs Ben Spencer and George Furbank for his team’s crunch autumn clash with back-to-back world champions South Africa.
After defeats by New Zealand and Australia, the national set-up is under pressure to deliver a much-needed victory.
But they face the toughest challenge in the game right now in the mighty Springboks.
Borthwick has made four changes to the team edged out by Australia. He has made significant calls in dropping scrum-half and Bath captain Ben Spencer from his matchday squad entirely.
Spencer has started both November games so far, but is replaced by Jack van Poortvliet at No 9.
Full-back Furbank also misses out with Freddie Steward of Leicester coming in. Steward is included to minimise South Africa’s physical threat and kicking game. England’s other two changes see wing Ollie Sleightholme and flanker Sam Underhill replace injured duo Immanuel Feyi-Waboso and Tom Curry.
Steve Borthwick has wielded the changes in his backline for England games vs South Africa
Ben Spencer (left) and George Furbank (right) miss out for Saturday’s game at Twickenham
South Africa are back-to-back world champions and may pose England’s toughest test yet
‘We’re excited to challenge ourselves against the world’s top-ranked team and back-to-back World Cup champions,’ said Borthwick, who has faced significant criticism as his team has lost their last four games. ‘Test matches against South Africa are always thrilling contests and I’m sure Saturday will be no exception.’
Sleightholme scored two tries as a replacement against Australia. His promotion to the starting XV in place of Feyi-Waboso sees Tommy Freeman switch from the left to the right wing.
Steward completes the back three. Apart from Underhill, England’s starting pack is unchanged. Wing Tom Roebuck is included among the replacements for the first time this autumn, alongside Luke Cowan-Dickie, Fin Baxter, Dan Cole, Nick Isiekwe, Alex Dombrandt, Harry Randall and George Ford.
South Africa, meanwhile, have named a traditional replacements bench of five forwards and three backs for England, but made a mammoth total of 12 changes from the team which hammered Scotland. In Edinburgh, Springboks director of rugby Rassie Erasmus went for seven forward and just one back in reserve, as he deployed his infamous ‘bomb squad’ of pack reserves to winning effect. Erasmus has named his first-choice side for England in what is a repeat of the 2023 World Cup semi-final – a game which South Africa edged by a point.
Siya Kolisi leads the Springboks.
‘The turnaround between the Scotland and England Tests is short, so we had to be smart in our selection to enable us to field a fresh squad with only six days between two tough Test matches,’ said Erasmus. ‘It obviously has a knock-on in effect in the sense we’ve made 12 changes to the starting line-up, but we have been rotating our squad all season.
‘We are pleased with the quality of the team we’ve been able to name. England pose a completely different challenge to Scotland and we selected our squad based on what we would like to do in the match and also what we think will be best to counter the challenge England pose.
‘Fortunately, we have quite a few players who can switch positions if necessary, so we feel we have adequate depth throughout the team which allowed us to select this group of replacements.
‘England come off two narrow defeats, but the quality of their performances was good in both matches, so we know size of the challenge. We lost narrowly to Ireland and France in back-to-back matches in 2022 and a year later were world champions, so we know we shouldn’t read anything into the last two results.’