England team: Winners and losers as Steve Borthwick confirms latest Henry Pollock ‘snub’ and leaves unused veteran ‘holding tackle bag’
Saturday heralds another England start for Fin Smith (centre) but Benhard Janse van Rensburg (left) and Henry Pollock have only been named on the bench in Argentina
Following the announcement of Steve Borthwick’s England team to face Argentina at Santiago del Estero in round three of the Nations Championship, here are our winners and losers.
The English head coach has named an unchanged starting XV from the team that hammered Fiji 73-8 last weekend in round two in Liverpool, and there are only two changes to his replacements bench.
This selection consistency means that 13 of England’s starters will have started all three of their July matches, starting with the 45-21 defeat to South Africa in Johannesburg before moving onto the Fijian fixture in the UK and then on to this upcoming Argentina away assignment.
This lack of variety suggests there isn’t much to mull over heading into this season-ending Test match, but there are still plenty of talking points. Here are our winners and losers from Borthwick’s selection to face Los Pumas.
Winners
Seb Atkinson
It’s perhaps a reflection of the severe pressure that Borthwick has come under following his disastrous Six Nations that, instead of rotating his July Nations Championship starting XVs, he has stubbornly stuck by choosing only a select few. Having just 17 players start across the three matches highlights what a conservative old bore the coach is, but a winner with this policy is the 24-year-old midfielder.
It was last year in the 2-0 series win in Argentina when he made his Test-level breakthrough. Injury then scuppered building on this breakthrough, but he returned for the final two matches of the Six Nations and his unbroken run in the No.12 shirt will now stretch to five matches. It’s an illustration that the international rookie is here to stay, according to Borthwick, but he now needs a stellar performance this Saturday to put to bed the criticisms of his effort in South Africa.
Guy Pepper
Given the facile nature of England’s win over Fiji, there would have been a temptation to recall Tom Curry to the starting line-up as he had the No.7 jersey for the July opener away to the Springboks, but Borthwick has stood by Pepper even though he failed to get on the ball much in last Saturday’s rout, just four carries, although one ended in a first-half try.
Pepper’s calling card is manning the defence, and he was only second to Alex Coles in this department in Liverpool, a work rate that has seen him retain the jersey for Santiago del Estero. Aside from Curry, there were plenty of headlines that Henry Pollock should be promoted to start after his hat-trick as a sub, but even that attacking prowess wasn’t enough to sway Borthwick away from his backing of Pepper.
Henry Slade
You must hand it to the Exeter veteran; despite all the setbacks experienced under Borthwick, he keeps fighting a resilient fight. When he was omitted for the 2023 Rugby World Cup, it was felt that it could be the end of his Test career, but he fought back from that damaging dent and continues to roll with the punches.
Having fractured his hand in the Test series opener last July in Argentina, he was dropped for Autumn Nations Series, bounced back, dropped again in the Six Nations and yet here is, ready to play his part back in Argentina having come onto the bench as 23-man at the 11th hour in Johannesburg and then started against Fiji to allow Tommy Freeman return to the wing following his failed outside centre experience. Now, the 33-year-old is set for another start, reinforcing he still has an in with Borthwick despite the coach regularly booting him in the balls.
Marcus Smith
The 27-year-old took his positional versatility to a new height last weekend at the Everton football ground by filling in as an emergency scrum-half, but he reverts to full-back and will wear the No.15 shirt for the third consecutive Saturday. It’s a prominence few thought he would have when he jetted out to South Africa a few weeks back.
However, after George Furbank took ill, Borthwick turned to Smith – rather than specialist full-back Freddie Steward – to play the role, and he still has a hold on the shirt despite the consensus being that Steward had a far superior aerial game to the Harlequins out-half. It suggests that the ability to fill as many different positions as possible is a crucial requirement in Borthwick’s eyes – and that has kept Smith ahead of the full-back alternatives.
Fin Smith
It was Mike Brown who declared this week the Northampton playmaker should be made England’s first choice in this position and allowed to build his way in the role all the way through to the 2027 Rugby World Cup rather than having to battle for the shirt as was the case earlier in the season when George Ford was the preferred No.10.
The 24-year-old is still in the foothills of his fledgling international career, so the more exposure now the better in the long run as regards next year’s finals in Australia. Ford was England’s star last summer in Argentina, skippering the team brilliantly to its series victory, but the allure of sticking him back in there this Saturday wasn’t as strong as the feeling that Smith should retain the spot and build on his recent displays versus South Africa and Fiji.
Jamie George
It was a stretch not so long ago to envisage the hooker to be still going so strong at Test level. Theo Dan, his Saracens clubmate, was touted as the coming man while Luke Cowan-Dickie had got himself back to fitness and was poised to be the next long-term man up in the position.
However, the 35-year-old George, who had given up the captaincy to Maro Itoje, has enjoyed a renaissance this season and is finishing the 2025/26 campaign not only skippering the team for a third consecutive match, but this 113th appearance will move him into fourth on the all-time list of most capped England men’s players. That’s quite the achievement.
Emmanuel Iyogun
The uncapped 25-year-old was deemed surplus to requirements when Borthwick named his 36-man Nations Championship squad on June 22, two days after the loosehead had helped to lay the foundation for Northampton’s PREM Rugby final win over Bath. A summer break beckoned, but that plan altered with England arriving back from South Africa and learning that Beno Obano, who had subbed behind Ellis Genge, would be sidelined for the following two Tests.
Borthwick went with Asher Opoku-Fordjour as his back-up loosehead versus Fiji, but with the Sale rookie switching to back-up tighthead this weekend, the call has come for Iyogun to provide the cover for Genge and stand poised to make his Test-level debut. That is sure to be a proud moment, one he didn’t think possible just a few weeks ago.
Ben Spencer
The Bath scrum-half could well have frustratingly been finishing up this Nations Championship block without making an appearance, but last weekend’s situation, which resulted in full-back Smith having to answer a second-half SOS at nine, has now resulted in Spencer securing his first matchday involvement this month.
The back-in-favour Jack van Poortvliet remains Borthwick’s preferred No.9, but the loss of sub Alex Mitchell to injury has resulted in the 33-year-old Spencer getting promoted to the bench in Argentina, even though Raffi Quirke was added to the squad before the team travelled out for the match. He was the starting scrum-half in all three wins last year over Argentina, and that experience marks him out as an ideal inclusion in Mitchell’s absence.
Losers
Henry Pollock
Bemused is the way to describe the youngster’s latest selection on the England bench. Just once in 12 appearances has the 21-year-old been named as a starter by Borthwick, the Six Nations Twickenham crash versus Ireland, but it was felt by many that Pollock’s hat-trick last weekend as a sub merited him getting a second start in the back row.
Yes, Fiji were rubbish in Liverpool, so the calibre of opposition he was scoring against didn’t count for much. However, there have been far too many times now when what Pollock does turns to gold, and it was said a start this weekend would be perfect to help England get under Argentina’s skin. Not so, decided the snub-delivering Borthwick, meaning it will now be November before fans next get a window to potentially see the star-in-the-making play from the first whistle.
Benhard Janse van Rensburg
Having scored with his first-ever touch in international rugby last Saturday, there was a debate that the South African should now be parachuted in for an England start in the hope of upgrading the midfield threat against a more serious opposition than Fiji. Throwing the 29-year-old off the deep end would have been a risky but great way to learn what he really has to offer at Test level, but that opportunity has been shunned by Borthwick in preference for continuity in the centres.
There has already been one failed experiment in the midfield this summer with the idea that Freeman could play No.13 shelved post-South Africa in favour of shunting him back out onto the winger and restoring Slade to the jersey outside the inexperienced Atkinson. In the end, Borthwick opted to keep van Rensburg in reserve in Argentina rather than risk a sink-or-swim scenario, and it has left fans waiting until November to see if a player recruited under the five-year residency rule is good enough to be an England starter.
Tom Curry
There was a considerable period when the back-rower was one of the first names on Borthwick’s team sheet, but that era seems to have passed and more often than not you will see his name instead listed among the replacements.
It’s as if the outlook for the recently turned 28-year-old is that less is more in his situation, given the level of serious injury he has sustained over his career, and this management of him from the bench is the way to see the best of him. The competitor in Curry, though, won’t agree and it will surely have hurt not reclaiming the No.7 jersey that he wore in this month’s opener away to South Africa.
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George Ford
It was just last year when the experienced out-half came away from Argentina cock-a-hoop that his drive and vision in the unexpected 2-0 series win left him as the man in control of the No.10 shirt, and he maintained a firm grip on the jersey all the way through to England’s spectacular February crashes versus Scotland and Ireland. That was the wounding prompt for the jersey to be given back to Fin Smith and the 33-year-old hasn’t had a sniff of playing since then.
His latest omission from the matchday squad means that he will finish July as one of nine players in Borthwick’s original squad of 36 to not play a single Nations Championship minute. Five forwards – Arthur Clark, Dan, Greg Fisilau, Ted Hill and Vilikesa Sela – along with four backs – Ford, Furbank, Max Ojomoh and Steward – have been left holding tackle bags this month (Furbank didn’t as he was instead carted off to hospital in South Africa and ruled out of selection). You can only imagine their level of frustration, especially Ford given how recently he was in pole position at No.10.
Noah Caluori
It might seem odd to have the Saracens teenager listed in this losers category, especially as he made a try-scoring debut just last weekend versus Fiji and has retained his spot as 23rd-man for the game versus Argentina. However, given there was so much hype about the talented 19-year-old between the end of the Six Nations and the squad’s assembly for the tour, to only get two caps off the bench seems a disappointment.
Multiple articles were written and podcasts filled with well-deliberated arguments that Borthwick should go for broke and start Caluori away to South Africa. Borthwick, being the stubborn Borthwick, though, opted instead to go with Immanuel Feyi-Waboso and Cadan Murley at Ellis Park and rather than Murley’s tour-ending injury opening a slot in the starting side for Caluori, inclusion on the bench was deemed sufficient for him by his head coach.
