Fin and Marcus Smith both have ultimate opportunity to prove a point to Steve Borthwick

The subplot of most significance to England head coach Steve Borthwick as he casts his eye over the two glorious Investec Champions Cup semi-finals this weekend is likely to be the fortunes of Mr and Mr Smith.

It is debatable who has the toughest assignment: Fin Smith attempting to mastermind Northampton Saints’ bid to upset Leinster at Croke Park or Marcus Smith’s head-to-head with France fly-half Romain Ntamack against Toulouse. Yet both are exactly the pressure-cooker environments that Borthwick will learn most from when he considers his selection for the summer tour of Japan and New Zealand.

When Warren Gatland picked his Lions squads for the last three tours, he used the big European showdowns and Six Nations title deciders both for data and gut feel about the character and mental strength of players to deliver when it mattered most.

Borthwick is understood to apply a similar threshold. The top end of European rugby is as close as a player can get to Test-match standards when playing for a club but it becomes more complex when assessing players in key positions such as the two Smiths. Many players have the skill-set to deliver red-letter displays in lower-key games during the course of the season with little on the line.

The filter tends to come at the business end of tournaments. The reason that Saracens provided so many players to the England set-up under Eddie Jones was the number of times that Mark McCall’s side delivered in big games, beating Leinster in Dublin, beating Racing in France.

Saracens would find themselves down on the scoreboard but maintained their composure before finding a way to win. It was one of the most compelling attributes of Owen Farrell and demonstrates why this weekend will carry extra weight on the shoulders of the two Smiths, who are battling it out along with George Ford to be Farrell’s long-term successor at fly-half for England.

Game control of Farrell, fluidity of Ford

Lots of talented players go through their careers without lifting a trophy. But winning silverware matters. Ask the Leinster squad. They may be regarded as one of the pre-eminent sides in Europe over the last decade, and Leo Cullen’s side are bidding to reach their third successive final. But you have to go back to 2018 for the last of their four titles.

Dealing with expectation and coping with the highest pressure explains why two players with similar ability can have very different international careers and, in this post-Farrell setting, both Smiths have a golden opportunity to press their claims to Borthwick that they have the character as well as the game management that he is looking for.

The signs are promising. Fin Smith, even at the tender age of 21, caught everyone’s attention with his match-winning display against Munster at Thomond Park in January (watch video below). If he was to deliver a similar display in front of an 82,300 crowd at Croke Park on Saturday, it could be a defining moment for the fly-half who seems to possess both the game control of Farrell and the fluidity of Ford.

The Northampton fly-half trained with headphones on and white noise blaring in his ears to prepare himself for the cacophony that awaits him in north Dublin. “As much as you say it doesn’t affect you, when you have got 82,000 for the first time, especially at my stage of my career, getting on your back when you are trying to focus on a skill is bound to have some bearing,” he says.

Fin Smith has been working with the Rugby Football Union’s sports psychologist Andrea Furst to make himself more resilient.

“I speak with her every other week,” he adds. “I was obsessed with rugby, I would watch loads of it and it was having a bit of a negative impact because if it was all that I was thinking about. If I made the tiniest mistake on the pitch it would seem like my world had come crashing down. So there has been a real challenge for me to switch off properly away from training.”

Big-match experience has helped too. “You can go into your shell, which is something a couple of years ago I would have been pretty bad at, but now I actually feel like I am in a good spot where I can enjoy and take in an atmosphere,” he continues. “I remember running out in the second half against Munster. We had just had a red card, we were down on the scoreboard, their supporters were all singing ‘Zombie’ with their phone lights on. We were all looking at each other and thinking, ‘this is pretty cool’. I took it all in and it showed that I am in a much more present place mentally than I would have been before.”

‘I am really excited about his future’

Since announcing himself on the world stage in 2021, Marcus Smith can already draw on a bank of big-match experience, winning the Premiership with Harlequins as well as representing England and the Lions. He outshone his namesake at Twickenham last Saturday, as Quins defeated Northampton (watch video below), and pulled the strings in the famous 42-41 victory against Bordeaux-Begles in the Champions Cup quarter-finals at Stade Chaban-Delmas.

For a player with the reputation of a flair-based game, Harlequins head coach Danny Wilson insists Marcus Smith has taken strides in his game management.

“I think that’s where his development has really kicked on recently,” says Wilson. “He has so much flair, so much ability, so much talent and he’s so hard-working. What people won’t know or don’t know is that he certainly doesn’t rely on talent. He’s a talent that works hard. He works extremely hard. For that reason, he’s constantly developing.

“I think we’ve seen in his performances this year, he’s had the flair and ability to beat people and create something out of nothing. He also has the ability and vision and people around him to be able to game-manage when he needs to.

“He is slowly growing, for me, to be one of the world’s best players and I am really excited about his future. I know he certainly has every opportunity to get there and it won’t be from a lack of hard work.

“He is ultra-competitive. You can put the best players in the world on a park’s pitch in front of one man and his dog and their personal pride means they will play to the same level as in front of 60,000 at Twickenham. That’s Marcus.”

Leinster and Toulouse will have other ideas, and one suspects the white-hot challenges will tell us much about the current status of the two Smiths in Borthwick’s summer plans.