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Perception of Steve Borthwick inside rugby is completely different to the outside view
It is early September, 2003. A small group of Bath players are in a Caffè Nero with Danny Grewcock who is awaiting a phone call to find out if he is in England’s World Cup squad. The call comes and it is good news. A celebratory muffin is offered but declined by Grewcock who says, “I just hope that doesn’t mean Borthers isn’t going. I wonder if they were choosing between us.”
Meanwhile, behind the back of the stand at the Rec, Steve Borthwick receives another call confirming that he is not in the squad. His omission is a crushing blow – and far from the last that he would receive in his career. But by the time that Borthwick meets up with the rest of the squad, it is like nothing has happened. He tells them: “Ah it’s all right, it just wasn’t meant to be.”
David Flatman, the Bath prop, recalls, “I imagine there are some players if they got dropped by England or lost the captaincy, the next day they would be knifing people left, right and centre. Others would laugh at themselves. With Steve, he wouldn’t mention it at all. He would keep his own counsel.”
There are many different sides to the England head coach, many of which are hidden from view. The public facing mask is close to inscrutable. There is none of the bombast of Eddie Jones nor the spark of an Andy Farrell. Those close to him universally describe him as engaging, jovial company, yet some of his interviews can be dour going on dull. This in part has led to a disconnect between how he is perceived by the public, first as a captain and now as a head coach, and how highly he is regarded by team-mates and coaches.
As a teenager, he made such an impression upon Nigel Redman, that England second row, insisted that Bath offer him a contract. Just last year, it was Borthwick who scaled the peak of Redman’s Project Everest to succeed Eddie Jones as England head coach.
John Connolly, who made him captain at Bath, compares him to Australian icon John Eales as a skipper and put him forward for the Wallabies job after Dave Rennie’s position was under peril.
Sometimes different parts of his personality can seem to be in conflict with each other. Joe El Abd describes Borthwick as the “the kindest, most genuine person in rugby” yet Borthwick also had no qualms about telling the coaches to hook Lee Mears, his best friend in rugby, when he missed his mark at a line-out.
“He is super honest,” Mears said. “There was one game where I came off the bench against Bristol and I missed one throw and missed another that wasn’t my fault. He was shouting: ‘Get Mears off.’ I was thinking: ‘Cheers Borths.’”
Yet even those who are closest to him struggle to recall an incidence of him showing vulnerability. But England head coach Brian Ashton described him as an “angry young man” after not playing a fuller part in the 2007 World Cup and he would miss out again in the 2011 World Cup.
“There were lots of things that would have hit Steve hard which he would not have shared with the wider group,” Flatman said. “My vision is that he gets in the car, punches a hole in the windscreen and gets home and is absolutely lovely to his family, makes a brilliant meal, gets to bed early and then wakes up at 5am to start planning Bath’s line-out moves for the first game of the season.”
If Borthwick does have a kindred spirit then it is Redman. Both were second rows who lacked the size of their contemporaries so had to find other ways to establish an advantage. They hit it off the moment they met at a coach development workshop while Borthwick was part of the England pathway programme.
“I remember this tall lock forward who was so thirsty for knowledge and so curious about line-out play,” Redman, who is now the RFU’s performance director, said. “I have only spent an hour in his company but he left such a big impression on me that we really need to explore this further. I immediately went back to Bath and said there’s this kid in the England pathway who we have got to sign.”
This was in the late 90s when the line-out lifting was introduced, opening up a new realm of possibilities for Redman and Borthwick to explore. Together they spent hours in Bath’s office on Queen Square going through VHS tapes of their own line-out and opposition’s. “When lifting came on board, Steve saw the possibility of movement and of timing,” Redman said.
“What set Steve apart was his interest and curiosity into what the opposition were doing and looking at robbing their primary source of possession. In order to win a game of rugby, you need a solid set piece. Steve really looked at the opposition and how he could disrupt it. He took a lot of pleasure from making it a misery for the opposition.”
As hooker, Mears was one of the primary beneficiaries of the hours of homework. “He was always about five moves ahead,” Mears said. “I would go to Borthers with my ideas and say ‘I’ve got this idea’ and he would say ‘I have thought about it, no.’ He could manufacture ball and make sure it was in space. I could throw the worst pie and the boys were so open they could not help but catch up.”
That studiousness was meshed with a steeliness. The competition between Borthwick and Grewcock was intense, both in an England environment and when they came back to Bath which resulted in what Mears calls the “mother of all punch-ups.”
“I remember Danny finally had enough and took this big swing and then they just went at it with Mike Foley screaming ‘Noooo! Stop it’ with his prime second rows beating the s--- out of each other. Neither of them would ever stop so they had to be pulled apart.
“He was not scared of throwing chat out on the field and getting in your head. Once he started stealing your line-outs, he would be telling you what you were going to do next and telling you that you are rubbish. Psychologically he could crush you.”
When Connolly became Bath director of rugby, he wasted little time in promoting Borthwick to captain ahead of far more experienced alternatives. “He had a certain presence about him. Players want to play for him. Great captains, like John Eales and Steve, they made players around them better players.”
Such was the impression that Borthwick left on Connolly that when Rennie departed, the former Wallabies coach lobbied figures at Rugby Australia to consider him as a candidate.
“I spoke to many people about him coaching Australia,” Connolly said. “He has got Australian connections. His wife comes from Melbourne. There were far, far worse options when it was clear that Rennie was going.”
Borthwick stayed at Bath for 10 seasons. There are mixed accounts of his departure. Whether it was through conspiracy or incompetence, a contract offer did not materialise and so Borthwick signed for Saracens in 2008. By the time he retired, the north London club were well on their way to building a dynasty. “Where Steve goes, success follows,” Mears said.
Nor does he think it is a coincidence that Bath suffered their drugs scandal the season after Borthwick left. “It would have never have happened on Borthers’ watch, not in a million years,” Mears said. “Alex Crockett and Mike Lipman became co-captains and were brilliant in their own way, but once we were in a social mode we were missing a Borthers to say: ‘Wind your neck in.’”
The only time that Mears ever remembers Borthwick letting his hair down – when he had some – was in the 2007 World Cup when he persuaded him to indulge in the thick Parisian hot chocolates with Mears and Shaun Perry. “Every now and then Borths would crack but then he would beast us in the gym,” Mears said.
This is not to say that Borthwick lives like a monk but he steered well clear of excess, which was far from the norm within rugby changing rooms in the early 2000s. “In rugby there is a default rugby group of behaviours, one of which is you are overtly sociable, you are an extrovert, you love being on the piss,” Flatman said. “But lots of lads aren’t like that. Now you are allowed to be yourself, but in a time when you weren’t allowed to be yourself he was and did it anyway. From an early age he was like that. You can’t have your captain not be on the end-of-season piss up. Yes I can. I will do what I want thanks. I will be there for a drink and then, smokebomb, I will disappear out of a side door while you guys crack on and make some bad decisions.”
Perhaps this is at the heart of the disconnect, that in a rugby world full of alpha personalities Borthwick is happy to be in his own man. “Some of the best comedians are introverts,” Redman said. “They don’t actually like big crowds, but the stage is their platform that allows them to become a different version of themselves. Really the rugby pitch is Steve’s stage.”
