'I'm walking down the beach in Bali with my wife and I get a phone call (from then team manager Martin Johnson) saying 'hey Steve you're no longer England captain! Actually, you're no longer in the England squad.''
STEVE BORTHWICK said the memory of being dropped by England while on honeymoon had steeled him for demoting Marcus Smith to the bench for Sunday’s Six Nations international against Italy at Twickenham.
“I’m walking down the beach in Bali with my wife and I get a phone call saying ‘hey Steve you’re no longer England captain! Actually, you’re no longer in the England squad’.“It hurts, but what you have got to do is keep working to be better,” insisted Borthwick. “That’s exactly what I did, and that’s what I have seen in the players this week.”
But Borthwick said he’d preferred his own judgement and that of defence chief and rugby league great Kevin Sinfield, as well as the opinion of former All Blacks fly-half turned Harlequins coach Nick Evans, drafted in by England to assist with their attack this Six Nations. “Farrell will play a more percentage game, I would think and they’ll use Smith later in the game to open it up. But we just concentrate on ourselves.”
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