Why ‘coach’s dream’ Benhard Janse van Rensburg is the England midfield answer hiding in plain sight
Benhard Janse van Rensburg impressed for Bristol Bears on Friday.
The residency debate is fair game, but it should not be confused with form. On rugby alone, Steve Borthwick has just found the most complete inside centre option England have had in years.
Anyone still in two minds about Benhard Janse van Rensburg should have been at Ashton Gate on Friday night. With Bristol 19 points down and all but beaten, the South African hauled them back almost on his own, a man-of-the-match display built on Test-level carrying. He did it, what is more, whilst quietly getting the better of Max Ojomoh and Ollie Lawrence in the midfield exchanges, turning the Bath inside centre over at the very moment it mattered. Hold onto that, because Ojomoh is precisely the man some insist should be wearing the England shirt ahead of him.
That performance is the springboard to a debate that has raged all week, and most of it has been muddled. The call-up has set the old guard off, Danny Care loudest among them, and in the heat, two separate arguments have been welded into one. However, they do not belong together.
Whether a man raised in Pretoria, qualified by five years’ residence, should wear the shirt at all is a cultural question, a matter of identity worth wrestling with honestly. Whether Ojomoh or a fit-again Lawrence has done enough to merit a place is a fair question, a plain call on who is playing the better rugby. One argument is about where a man comes from. The other is about how he is playing.
Pull them apart, and the picture clears. The cultural objection is the only real argument against the Bristol centre, and it falls down, based on precedent, trend and acceptance. On form, and especially after Friday night, the answer is no longer hiding in plain sight at all.
Above all, the physicality
Begin where it matters most. When Manu Tuilagi wasn’t available, which was quite often, England spent years fielding clever, tidy midfields that moved the ball nicely and never once put the opposition on the back foot. At 6’2″ and a shade over 16 stone, Janse van Rensburg is the corrective plan, a carrier who goes looking for the collision and usually wins it, the sort who turns a flat, lateral backline into something that moves forward off first phase.
Stuart Barnes wondered whether the South African might finally make the England attack the gainline-breaking force it has rarely been, and that is the whole point of him. Borthwick lost Fraser Dingwall from the starting side precisely because England wanted more in the carry, and here is a man who supplies it without the limitations of a one-note crash merchant. Test rugby is settled by who wins the gainline. England have spent too long losing that fight in the middle of the park, and at last there is a 12 built to win it.
The skills behind the size
A wrecking ball alone would not be worth this column, and in Janse van Rensburg’s case, the case rests on everything wrapped around the power. He is a converted fly-half by trade, comfortable enough at 10 that when AJ MacGinty went down early against Leinster, he simply slotted in and ran the game. That heritage shows in his distribution and a real kicking game, the second-playmaker function Borthwick keeps reaching for and rarely finding in a body this size. Pat Lam, who has watched him closer than anyone, calls him a coach’s dream, and the man’s own words betray a refreshing lack of ego, having once described his value as wanting only to slot in wherever the team needs him and grow from there. A 12 who carries like a forward and passes like a fly-half is rare enough. One who organises the backline like a captain on top of that is rarer still.
The defensive case
The attacking noise drowns out the half of his game that may be the strongest. Janse van Rensburg defends like a man who enjoys it. Lam’s favourite memory predates Bristol, from the seasons his sides kept running into London Irish and finding this was the one defender who could keep Semi Radradra quiet, about as ringing an endorsement of a midfield stopper as the league offers. His floating role at Bristol often has him defending wider than a conventional twelve, getting into faces and killing attacks at source, the proactive edge a defence coach of Richard Wigglesworth’s leanings covets. He once chased an intercept the length of the pitch with Bristol 60 points clear, for no reason beyond the fact that slackening off is not in him. England have shipped soft midfield tries for years, and this is a man who plugs that kind of leak.
The field he has to beat
The alternatives only sharpen the point. Dingwall is a lovely organiser who lacks the physical dent, Lawrence has the power and cannot stay fit, Seb Atkinson offers the passing game when his body allows it, and Henry Slade’s class keeps him around though he is a 13 at heart and has rarely delivered the quality for country that he delivers for club. Each hands England a piece of the puzzle. Janse van Rensburg hands them the rarest combination in the game, collision, distribution and defence in a single body. Should Borthwick keep faith with one of those incumbents at 12, the Bristol man slots to 13, a shirt he wears comfortably and one that frees his defence further still. The number matters less than the principle. Get him on the pitch.
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The Freeman axis
The dream version puts him at 12 with Tommy Freeman outside him, the man whose tries from midfield made him England’s go-to 13, two big ball-players who leave a defence guessing between carry and pass. Move Janse van Rensburg to 13, bring Seb Atkinson in at 12 and Freeman simply slides to the wing he also terrorises. There is no version of this in which getting him into the side weakens it, which is the point of a player this complete.
The noise, and the double standard beneath it
Which leaves the cultural objection, the only argument that was ever really standing, and it does not survive logical challenge. English rugby (not to mention French, Welsh, Scottish and Irish rugby, and Australian and New Zealand, via the Pacific Islands) has been built on this pathway for 30 years. Manu Tuilagi, the Vunipola brothers, Nathan Hughes and the 2003 World Cup winner Mike Catt all arrived through residency or heritage, and nobody now wishes one of them uncapped. The criticism is especially rich from a Harlequins man, because Care built his own success on exactly this, winning the 2021 title alongside André Esterhuizen and Wilco Louw and later sharing the Stoop dressing room with the vast Irné Herbst, three South Africans signed for the blunt reason that they were available and they made the team better.
England already accept residency, the club game that pays everyone is built on cross-border talent, and the only honest question under the rules is whether a player improves the Test side. This one does. Pick the best available team, and if you do, he is in it.
